Off to WY to shoot P-dogs

[Mountaineer]

Off to WY to shoot P-dogs

It's fun. I'll be in western SD in a couple weeks and we're driving this time so the AR or .222 is coming along. The FIL's ranch is usually loaded with them in a couple spots unless they were recently poisoned.

[3DW5]

That video is awesome!!!!!

[WyoBull]

Chugwater area, we are going to try a couple new spots this trip but we’ve never had an issue finding plenty of targets.

Yes, there are sod poodles in that area for sure. There are prairie dogs around and my previous comment was not meant to portray there were any out there. There are just not near the numbers that were around when I was shooting them growing up here.

I remember going up on Shirley Rim and shooting hundreds of rounds in a day and not moving more than a mile in any direction. Last month I went to the same places and shot 30 rounds.

In some places they have gotten the plague while in others the ranchers have been poisoning or smoke bombing them because of the damage they do. Others want to charge for the privilege and that is something I am just not willing to do.

Have a great time creating the "red mist"!

[Filletem]

I’ve been up here for a week seeing Yellowstone and the Tetons the weather is great.

[kae006]

Off to WY to shoot P-dogs

Realized I never updated this thread. The weather was great, the dogs weren't quite as active as they usually are but we still shot tons. Shot .223, .308, 6.5CM, and .50BMG this trip.







Here's a slo-mo of my dad shooting my Barrett M107A1:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49Z3tB8rc2o"]Barrett M107A1 .50BMG Slow-Motion - YouTube[/ame]

[RifleBowPistol]

Lucky you, got to shoot those rodents many years ago, spent two weeks up there fishing and shooting prairie dogs. It was a blast, and we only used 22 LRs. Had we had something like a well built AR in 223, and a couple cases of ammo, we could have really had fun.

[RifleBowPistol]

I'm sure you're gonna get plenty of shootin in. My buddy and I took the .17HMR's out. We killed about 200 this evening between the two of us. I got 12 doubles and 1 triple. We try to line them up to save some ammo.

17 HMRs, on those things sounds like a blast.

[RifleBowPistol]

I worked in Cheyenne for a month last summer, followed by 2 months in Casper. I went out in search of some shooting but didn't find a whole lot of the little critters to shoot at. I'd welcome any insight on locations where I could find them in the future.

On a more positive note, I did very well on the big trout on the Miracle Mile.

If you did not find any in those areas, they probably have been hunted very hard. When I went up there years ago, we stayed in Casper, they were everywhere along the sides of the roads, just outside of town, then any church or other business that had a lawn, had them. That was just in town. Once you got out of town it was on.

We had the most fun hunting around Elks Mt. in northern Colorado. But we killed a lot of them in multiple areas within 25 miles of Casper. My buddy's dad worked on gas compressors. When he would go out to some location to fix a gas compressor, if he did not need us to help him pick up something heavy, we took off after prairie dogs. Most places we found some to shoot, there was at least one place we did not find any prairie dogs, but we did find coyotes, pronghorn and a cougar.

The trip we took down to Elks Mt., was a blast, those prairie dogs or some of them were huge. Pretty sure we found some rock chucks or something. There were some healthy prairie dogs, but also some that were just flat huge for prairie dogs, we popped them also. That was a lot higher elevation around that mountain, but there were a lot of rodents to shoot.

What was pointed out to me early on, was once one is dead, the other will come up out of the town to eat the dead one, much quicker, if it is torn open. We would see them run over on the side of the road in or around Casper, always you would see others eating on the dead dog. So when we were in areas where there were not as many prairie dog towns. We would pick some off, then sit and wait for the others to come up out of the town, to eat their family members and then pick them off also.

We were only 14 at the time, we walked many miles at each location we hunted. You will know when they are in the area, you can hear them sound off the warning, then they all start diving down holes. If we found a area, with a lot of towns or obviously a lot of dogs, we would lay down and hang out for a while, pick off as many as possible. Then wait for a while, try to get some more, then pick up and move looking for other areas with lots of dogs. Only have 22 LRs, we were limited to about 150 yards, we also only had open sights. 100 yards and less was a lot more doable.

Definitely finding areas that have not been hunted hard, are probably the best areas, those areas are probably not going to be some place you can just drive up to and get out of the truck and start shooting, at least not now days. Even back then we hiked many miles off of the road we came in on, to find the towns we hunted. Sometimes there were some that were easy to get to, but we usually did not get many shots at the towns close to the roads. I am talking about dirt roads, not public paved roads.

Someone else mentioned finding the prairie dog towns on google earth, then checking to see if that land was open to the public, that sounds like a pretty good idea. I still like the way we did things back then, we got to see a lot of cool stuff. We definitely did a lot of walking and not finding any dogs, in some areas. One of the coolest things that we had happen, was we almost got run over by a pronghorn and a cougar at one place. We just happened to be at the right place and the right time or wrong place at the wrong time. We were walking along and a pronghorn blew past us out of nowhere, literally almost ran right over us. Before we could even say a word, we then were right in the path of a cougar leaving a vapor trail also, trying to catch the pronghorn. They were both gone and out of sight so quick. Pretty obvious to both of us, that we never wanted to get chased down by a cougar, we would have been slow easy meals.