Found myself exploring a series of online rabbit holes regarding prairie dog hunting. What can you share regarding:

- Time of Year
- Lodge/outfitter recs
- Gear Needed (firearm choice, optics etc)
- How'd you do, was it fun?

Thanks.

Any time, but if you don't like freezing on the great plains, warm weather is better.

Don't know of any lodges or outfitters. Usually just a rancher who needs pest control.

22 magnum or 17HMR. Midrange 3-9x50 scope worked fine.

Meh. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. They just stand there.

Quote:

---

Prairie Dog Hunting Killing

---

FIFY.


Any time of year. Winter is ok if you can stand the cold, the dogs are easier to see from what my friends who do this all this time say. I wouldn't do it then though.
Gear: Folding Table, stools/chairs, bench rest, sandbags, decent optics. Use a .22 up to 5.56.
I'm sure others will hunt with different calibers.
Kill in one spot for an hour or two, then pack up and move on.

It's live target practice, I hesitate to call it hunting.

Shot some on a farm in Gaines County outside Seminole when I was a kid. It was so fun. We used .22 mags and wore em out. Would love to go shoot some again one day.

We use to go every year twice a year. Once in June, once in September. In Montana by Ft Belknap on the Indian reservation. Indian guide goes with you but he just takes you to the spots and then just hangs out.
We did most shooting over 100 yards. Most over 200…..Out to 350 or longer. Hence the rifles I take.
The old vets shoot .223, 22-250 mostly.
Shoot so much had to take 2-3 rifles cause the barrels get hot. Take about 2500-3000 rounds.
I shoot 22-250, 220 Swift, 223 and 222 rifles I take.
Stay for a week. Total blast.
Never seem to make dent in them.
When Covid came they shut it down.
We are going in June. All of the guys in our group are Viet Nam vets and getting age on them. I am the "kid" of the group. Five of us go. Two of the old vets were snipers in country and are a blast. They all can still shoot well.
You will enjoy it. The fun is the long hard shots imho.

The 204 Ruger is an ideal prairie dog round.
We hunted near Hereford and Tulia, it was great, but the dogs were quite wary, shots under 200 yds were rare. 10+ years ago.
I used my 17 Ackley Hornet, and 17 Mach IV, until the wind picked up, then switched to the 204.
We alternated between being a spotter, and shooter.

Never been myself. A former coworker used to go. His cartridge of choice was a 22-250. Also he liked shooting from distance better.

I would agree on that. The ones in close(150 yards or less) learn fast and disappear. I used my 222 for the close guys. Then switched to the other cartridges for long.
It's fun to become a member of the 500 yard club, as my buddies call it.

I've killed more than my fair share of p-dogs over the last 10 or so years.

Time of year doesn't matter - just depends on how cold/hot you want to be and where you want to go. You'll find em in the states anywhere from west TX all the way to MT.

I've never heard of a p-dog "outfitter", more like you just need to be friends with a rancher that hates the ****ers - which is every rancher that has them. Your best bet is making friends with one of those.

You need a cooler of beer and a long gun that won't wear you out with a lot of shooting. 22-250, 223, 17HMR, 22mag, etc as previously mentioned. Easy to shoot off the back of the truck or can bring a folding table and chairs. Also entertaining to shoot a few with bigger rifles and join the "red mist club", but that gets expensive quick. Great practice for stretching your range as well.

Most fun you can have with a rifle.

Use whatever rifle you need to sight in, it's great practice

204, 17 rem/rem fireball/hornet. Those are the rounds. Even more fun is to find a low wind day and shoot those SOBs at 1000 yards. My brother edged me out in South Dakota and sniped one at 1800 yards. Mine was 1650. We grew up on a ranch and have deer hunted our whole life. As far as shooting skill, predator hunting and prairie dog long range will test marksmanship better than all else. Love it.

Your shooting 1600-1800 yards with a .204 and a..17?

I used to go twice a year to specific private land properties near Clayton, NM and in the TX panhandle on the border between TX and NM. I never used any guides; we just asked around and made friends with landowners who wanted them eradicated and shot for free. We found the best time to go was in the spring…April through early June. We saw more activity in the spring than any other time, when the grass was greening up and lush. Any earlier and it was too cold; much later and the heat was too unpleasant.

We would bring shooting benches, canopies to give us shade, lots of coolers full of refreshments, optics, 2-4 rifles apiece and LOTS of ammo. I used to bring 3000-4000 rounds of ammo just for me for a weekend of shooting, and half the time, I would use all of it! As stated, it isn't "hunting," it's sniping big rats. On our better places on good years, we could setup in one spot and have plenty of shooting all day long without relocating!

As for rifles, I would bring varmint-style heavy barreled bolt actions in .223, .22-250, .204, 6BR, 6PPC, 6-.284, etc, usually with 4-16x or 6-24x class scopes. You can really burn up barrels on rifles on a good place, which is why I'd bring 3-4 rifles and rotate them. The biggest expense was ammo, and you'd better handload, or it certainly got expensive!

I stopped going because the landowners I was in contact with either passed away or sold their property and the fact I was having greater difficulty getting enough brass, powder, and primers, and it was getting very tiresome and very expensive to load so much ammo.

But, it was fun!

I bait and poison mine. Shooting for eradication is like pissing in the ocean. It is fun, but most are very wary after a few shots. After that, it is like fishing in that it is a lot of sitting and waiting. Piss on it. There are more enjoyable animals to hunt.

Yes. We were at a long range shooting facility in South Dakota. A place where military training occurs for snipers. We spent 2 days on the target course and then the live action shots were the following two days on the dogs. I don't remember the numbers but I believe the 204 had somewhere around 14' of elevation to hit at 1600 yards. It had barely enough terminal force to penetrate a dog. The 17 was effective out to 500 yards. But as I said the only thing that made those calibers effective was the lack of wind. We shot a lot of 223/556 as well. The week before we were there the corse record was taken by a sniper who hit a dog at 2400 yards with a 556. Most dogs were taken <500 yards which made the 204 and 17 REM a blast. The extreme shots were nothing more than luck attempts. The owner of the facility had some impressive glass that made going for those long shots too tempting not to try. But at <500 those two rounds were deadly.

Gunny456 said:

---

Your shooting 1600-1800 yards with a .204 and a..17?

---

Awesome stuff!

I was planning to run with a 22 Creedmoor and .223 but sounds like I need to add to the arsenal. Anyone rolled with an AR-type setup or is that not accurate enough?

Wanting to set this up for a buddies 50th. Don't know any landowners in that part of the country, but would be happy to swap a couple of days killing PDs for a SoTX management hunt, or trophy Oryx or blackbuck if anyone cares to connect me.

Being near quality lodging and good restaurants is a plus.

Here's our '22 set up in New Mexico.

I had more fun calling shots for the young shooters than pulling the trigger.

5000 rounds of 223 in 2 days.

panhandlefarmer said:

---

I bait and poison mine. Shooting for eradication is like pissing in the ocean. It is fun, but most are very wary after a few shots. After that, it is like fishing in that it is a lot of sitting and waiting. Piss on it. There are more enjoyable animals to hunt.

---

I remember seeing a show about ranchers in the plains/midwest using these giant vacuum trucks to suck those little rats out of their holes.

Pretty cool. We had similar at our ranch in the hill country. we had a Texas Cert. CCL range and we also hosted HPD, Pearland PD, Harris county and a couple of other SWAT teams of PD's in Texas. It was a blast having those guys come to the ranch as they would bring some very neat "toys" to shoot and play with. We had a regular range set up for pistol and rifle but also had a 1000 yard range. I was constantly amazed at the shots those guys would do. They would build a training "house" , if you will, in one of my barns for teaching guys how to clear a home or building. They spent a lot of time also on physical training and hostage locating at night. Each department usually stayed a full week.
It was always a fun time to have them. Made me really respect what they do.

Where we go in Montana is really fun. Not much sitting and waiting. We shoot so much that you have to bring multiple rifles as the barrels get so hot you have to change out. The PD's up close (100-150) yards learn pretty fast but the long shots is like a constant shooting arcade. We move the next day to another spot and its like that all over again. On the third day we will usually go back to our first spot and its like we never killed a single one...little guys are everywhere again. Cant wait till we go this year!

Absolutely on the AR! One of my main rifles I take is a Colt Match Target Competition H-Bar with 1:9 twist H-Bar Target barrel..... Optics on it is a Leupold VX-6 3-18 x 50mm.
Will reach out there and touch them.

My next favorite is a custom rifle my FIL built for me. It is a Remington 700 action, Timney trigger. Cartridge is a .223 Ackley with a stainless Hart Target Barrel that is threaded for suppressor. Laminated Wood stock with thumbhole. Optics is a Leupold VX-III 8.25 - 25 X 50MM Long Range.

SunrayAg said:

---

Any time, but if you don't like freezing on the great plains, warm weather is better.

Don't know of any lodges or outfitters. Usually just a rancher who needs pest control.

22 magnum or 17HMR. Midrange 3-9x50 scope worked fine.

Meh. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. They just stand there.

---

.22-250 works, and they do get smart in a hurry. There was a town or two around Middlewell I'd pop a few for coyote trapping bait, and it could be a bit of a challenge at times.

Watch for prairie rattlers in warm weather. Mean little bastages.

Roger that on the .22-250!

My mom's side of the family farmed/ ranched in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Part of the operation was a farrow to finish hog operation. Grandad had a tank with a pto driven pump that he would pull with a tractor. He would pump the liquid out of the hog lagoons then pull it out to the pasture where there was a prairie dog town. He would flood the holes with liquid pig chit and knock the prairie dogs in the head with a shovel when they came swimming up to the top of the holes. You could kill a lot of those vermin in an afternoon. It was at least a 2 man operation because you needed to watch multiple holes as they are connected. Looking back, he was killing 2 birds with one stone as he gained ground in the never ending war on prairie dogs and it kept the grand sons occupied for an afternoon.

panhandlefarmer said:

---

I bait and poison mine. Shooting for eradication is like pissing in the ocean. It is fun, but most are very wary after a few shots. After that, it is like fishing in that it is a lot of sitting and waiting. Piss on it. There are more enjoyable animals to hunt.

---

Yep.

Bait, poison, shooting, etc. does diddly squat unless you can get an entire neighborhood to commit to a years-long war. Otherwise, they just retreat into Cambodia and Laos, and attack across the border into your place when you aren't looking.

The only effective prairie dog control is a good does of bubonic plaque. We had an epidemic of that sweep through our area a decade or more ago. It was great.

If I could bottle and sell that stuff, I would.

https://www.ultimateprairiedoghunting.com/usa/montana/

When I was in Montana we used to go out to friends parents place and slaughter them with 22-250. His dad had probably 5 rifles that had nice leupold glass and most shots were under 200 yards. Just so much fun. His mom would bring food out to us and be so thankful. I always felt guilty after a day out there. Hundreds of rounds and get fed.

17 WSM is the way to go.

Yes, that's a "WSM" (not "Short Mag" but "Winchester Super Mag").

The largest rimfire produced. I can pop steel at 300 yards all day. Take these pups out even at 400 yards.

I'm not a fan of this guy in the video for personal reasons, but he does know his stuff about the 17WSM. He built me a TSM Customs with a Zermat Arms action just like he uses in the video. I however use my Savage B17 WSM now.

probably 35 or 40 years ago i shot at Carter Country quiet a bit. there was a man that i would see from time to time. his PASSION was shooting those xxxx dogs. he used several heavy barrel custom rifles all chambered in 220 Swift. never saw him clock his rounds but they had to be doing 4k fps. every time he shot one he would trim the spent cartridge. i have never seen so much brass trimmed off of a case before or since. can't guess what pressure those rounds produced.
He told me the ones he hit just exploded.

JHShipley said:

---

Found myself exploring a series of online rabbit holes regarding prairie dog hunting. What can you share regarding:

- Time of Year
- Lodge/outfitter recs
- Gear Needed (firearm choice, optics etc)
- How'd you do, was it fun?

Thanks.

---

My experience as a youngster growing up in west Texas:

- Time of Year : Whenver my Grandpa said, 'Let's go shoot some prairie dogs.'
- Lodge/outfitter recs: Grandpa's house
- Gear Needed (firearm choice, optics etc): Grandpa's 22
- How'd you do, was it fun?: Hit and miss, and it absolutely was a blast.

The 17 WSM is a beast for a rimfire. I became a huge 17 fan many years ago. I have nearly the full lineup in the cabinet. I have the HMR, WSM, Hornet, REM Fireball, Rem. I use them all the time for all sorts of shooting.

I can't add much, but when I was a new trooper in the panhandle about 30 years ago the guys that did it regularly had some serious guns. Giant rounds, little bitty bullets, heavy barrels and scopes that looked like telescopes. Lots of folks would just go plink them like I did turtles in a stock tank as a kid. The ones that were serious though would set up and blast them from stupid ranges.

Edit for spelling

I've only shot them in Eastern CO when pronghorn hunting. The ones on public will disappear quickly when they see a truck or hear shooting if they've been shot at before.

It was fun, an AR in .223 is ideal IMO since it's a round that's easy on barrels. I also had the interesting experience of multiple hawks showing up to eat the dead prairie dogs, so you had to be very aware of your shooting with 7 or 8 birds on the ground.