Where can i shoot prarie dogs??

[spencerhenry]

By the sounds of some of these posts, you guys should just stay home, its far too hard to find good spots.

If you don't know the land, how do you learn the land? You learn it by looking at it, google earth is ok, but getting out there in your truck, car, motorcycle or on foot is where its at. That's all part of the adventure. I used to live in Colorado, I've gone out found ground squirrels and or prairie dogs by just getting out there, get some BLM maps, look for areas that aren't steep, there are roads all over especially in the gas fields. OnX makes it really easy to see what is private and who owns it. But, all the shooting I've done for Pdogs has been on public lands. Am I overheating 3 rifles, no, but I am having fun and doing quite a bit of shooting. But,then I don't carry a bunch of crap, I walk out far enough to find a good vantage point and lay down prone with a pair of binoculars for ranging, a hundred rounds of ammo, and a rifle on a bipod. No bench, no cooler, no chair. When I have shot all that I can see from that spot, I walk, or drive to the next spot.

Last week, here in Idaho, I shot for an hour and fifteen minutes, killed 40 ground squirrels. On another day I shot 46 with a rimfire, then switched to a centerfire and shot until a pin worked loose on the trigger and the gun wouldn't fire. Killed 104 total in a couple hours. Next time I'll take a spare rifle, I could have probably killed 200 that day. To me, that is an exceptional day.

 

[Lee Whitsel]

Being from nc, we don't have them anywhere close that I know of. Where can I go to shoot Prarie dogs? Ive google searched it a little but didn't find out much as far as a place to go but did learn that the ones that have them absolutely hate them and can't kill them fast enough so don't think it would make much sense to pay an outfitter.

 

[chop house]

No offense intended, but you don't seem to know how devastating the plague is to prairie dogs.

none taken, and that is a true statement. natures way of population control i guess.

anyway, in my locale the earth pro imagery gets updated once in a while, and the historical button gives a slider popup. a quick look 'out west' shows latest at 12/23 some places, as opposed to 2024 in the 'inhabited zones'.

i was mostly suggesting the tools as a way to locate areas to research further by phone calls or other contacts. i know the folly of hunting old spoor... and i am too old now to enjoy the hike for it's own sake.

thanks for the heads up.

 

[Tommie]

never pay an outfitter. call feed mills in town's where there are know dog and gopher sh00ting. Here in M0NTANA i have 3 ranch's near my house that beg me to come any time and start shooting. Asked at a gas station and got all the shooting i can handle. Near hire or pay to shot rats it's free just use some common sense and be safe and you'll be welcomed back with 0pened arms.

True. But asking permission as a local or area resident is way easier. Suggesting someone from out of state can easily score private land by just asking around isn’t necessarily good advice. I’m sure you know what I mean.

 

[Lee Whitsel]

I hunted with Willie, he is the best… just ask him.

Look up dog and gopher hunting areas in the U.S. and a map came up for me clicked on the state and bingo it shows a map of that states highest concentration of critters . Call feed Milles, game wardens, farm dealers like John Deere, Massey, etc. they know every farmer on a first name bases. Also when you get to an area you want to hunt ask a rural mail man they know every single place and who has a real problem and needs them thinned out. Remember here where i live gas stations and eateries are far away in most cases a cooler with ice and food and water is a must. Sun glass's and a big brimmed hat sure is nice. I've never had to shot a rattler. But a friend of mine walked into an area full of rattlers a few years ago and the rancher said oh that hill 0ut there has a den on it that's why you saw so many. So bird shot in a 38 is smart thinking I'd say. G00d sh00ting guys and gals.

 

[chuckshooter]

True. But asking permission as a local or area resident is way easier. Suggesting someone from out of state can easily score private land by just asking around isn’t necessarily good advice. I’m sure you know what I mean.

I have always found ranchers to be very friendly and accommadating. I'll admit it's quite spooky driving past no trespassing signs and then walking up to a door and knocking on it. But I have yet to have a negative encounter. And I've been asking for permission for over 35 years in Nevada, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota. Last year at breakfast in a small Wyoming town, we had a rancher come up to us and ask us if we were prairie dog shooters. That led to a couple more places to shoot. His ranch and his neighbors. Or a person can just stay home.

 

[RabbitSlayer]

No offense intended, but you don't seem to know how devastating the plague is to prairie dogs. I can show you 50 'dog towns' on google earth that there's not 1 prairie dog in. And there hasn't been one in those towns for 10 years since the plague went through. Google earth images are not updated in the booming metropolis centers of rural Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota very often. There's no need to, things change slowly in those areas. If someone thinks you can simply look at an areal photo of an area, and find a hot dog town, they are in for a rude awakening and an empty gas tank. Believe me, it's not that easy. I shot one dog town for 30+ years, and probably shot, at the very least, 10,000 prairie dogs in it. The plague killed it about 10 years ago and it has never come back.

I have absolutely found dog towns from google earth, drove hundreds of miles, showed up and killed piles. Of course i have also arrived to find out its an ocean of fire ant mounds and not a dog town.

Pick an area you know has dogs and public land start googling every town around with the word PD or PD hunting. You will eventually find a forum post where someone spilled the beans. I found all my spots just from loose lips on the internet and GE. Everytime I go I shoot the places I know and spend 1 day looking for new ones. Problem in my area is the dogs are on public land in the flats but they keep building houses in the surrounding hills. Still legal and full of dogs, but unsafe to shoot.

 

[STS]

I have absolutely found dog towns from google earth, drove hundreds of miles, showed up and killed piles. Of course i have also arrived to find out its an ocean of fire ant mounds and not a dog town.

Pick an area you know has dogs and public land start googling every town around with the word PD or PD hunting. You will eventually find a forum post where someone spilled the beans. I found all my spots just from loose lips on the internet and GE. Everytime I go I shoot the places I know and spend 1 day looking for new ones. Problem in my area is the dogs are on public land in the flats but they keep building houses in the surrounding hills. Still legal and full of dogs, but unsafe to shoot.

How many dead towns have you driven to? I didn't say it was not possible to find a live dog town via areal photos. My point was that it can be a huge waste of time for a nonresident, that has spent a bunch of gas money and time, to think that it's foolproof way to locate a shooting area. The western states had a big die off about 10 years ago and many of the towns have never recovered. I've seen 4 major plague events in my lifetime. Usually the towns would repopulate in 3 or 4 years. This last plague event was different in that a lot of the towns never came back. In the areas of eastern Montana and western South Dakota that I shoot, I would estimate that there are only 30 to 40 percent of the number of live towns that there were prior to the plague outbreak. That was the point of my post, if you look at those towns from Google Earth images it still looks like a dog town, but there's nothing there. Anyone is welcome to use the internet, and it's imaging, to try and find an area but it comes with a substantial risk of massive failure.

 

[RabbitSlayer]

For sure been to dead towns. Even when there is no plague, towns change shape, move, grow, and shrink. I work in environmental consulting and map the annual change of dog towns as part of my job. Also there are like 4 PD species. Blacktail which you are talking about. Whitetail which share some range with other species but dont occur in huge colonies. Gunnison, which is what I hunt, and utah prairie dog which is endangered and illegal to hunt. In my estimation, you are more likely to find Gunnison on public land. Google range maps for all of them, they overlap some. Gunnison also form big towns, but not as big as Blacktail. Some basic ecology would suggest that some species with smaller colonies are less likely to have their population destroyed over huge areas.

Similar is Belding's ground squirrel in CA, NV, WA, and OR. They may have a wider range i dunno off hand. Alturas CA has an annual hunt and banquet with prizes and stuff. People come from around the world to blast em. Commies probably banned it by now, but once upon a time...My friends hunt it every year with lead free ammo, but I refuse to give my money to a fish and game department that spends it on banning hunting, fishing, and trapping.

There are also little ground squirrels. I don't know as much about them. Not sure how many species there are. Some guys i know hunt em on pivots in utah and call em ....diggers I think. I can't remember for sure. We have some here by vegas. People dump pumpkins and shoot em. I blast the little things when they come for the pumpkins a few days after Halloween.

 

[vonb]

We hunted with Willie...............not a fan.

I too have shot p'dogs with Willie. While he did put us on dogs and kept us out of the rain, the dogs were gun shy and had been shot over. With this being my first time out, I didn't know any better. It was until a second trip with a different outfitter that I realized the experience was night and day difference. The second trip offered all the dogs we could shoot up close and they didn't duck down.

Willie's lodging accommodations was a motel inside Ft. Pierre while the second trip was a family homestead on the ranch. I enjoyed that much more than the motel.

 

[STS]

For sure been to dead towns. Even when there is no plague, towns change shape, move, grow, and shrink. I work in environmental consulting and map the annual change of dog towns as part of my job. Also there are like 4 PD species. Blacktail which you are talking about. Whitetail which share some range with other species but dont occur in huge colonies. Gunnison, which is what I hunt, and utah prairie dog which is endangered and illegal to hunt. In my estimation, you are more likely to find Gunnison on public land. Google range maps for all of them, they overlap some. Gunnison also form big towns, but not as big as Blacktail. Some basic ecology would suggest that some species with smaller colonies are less likely to have their population destroyed over huge areas.

Similar is Belding's ground squirrel in CA, NV, WA, and OR. They may have a wider range i dunno off hand. Alturas CA has an annual hunt and banquet with prizes and stuff. People come from around the world to blast em. Commies probably banned it by now, but once upon a time...My friends hunt it every year with lead free ammo, but I refuse to give my money to a fish and game department that spends it on banning hunting, fishing, and trapping.

There are also little ground squirrels. I don't know as much about them. Not sure how many species there are. Some guys i know hunt em on pivots in utah and call em ....diggers I think. I can't remember for sure. We have some here by vegas. People dump pumpkins and shoot em. I blast the little things when they come for the pumpkins a few days after Halloween.

The Beldings extend eastward across the entire state of Montana too. I shot 190 of them yesterday afternoon.

 

[urbanrifleman]

I keep reading these posts about "scouting". Boy I don't know. I have been places were there wasn't any gas stations for 50 miles. Or a house for that matter. The idea that a guy is going to make a trip from say, Florida, and just drive around trying to find a John Deere dealership or a town you can see from the road, then locate the owner to get permission... I don't know. I'm sure it's feasible. But you better have two fuel tanks.

 

[chuckshooter]

For sure been to dead towns. Even when there is no plague, towns change shape, move, grow, and shrink. I work in environmental consulting and map the annual change of dog towns as part of my job. Also there are like 4 PD species. Blacktail which you are talking about. Whitetail which share some range with other species but dont occur in huge colonies. Gunnison, which is what I hunt, and utah prairie dog which is endangered and illegal to hunt. In my estimation, you are more likely to find Gunnison on public land. Google range maps for all of them, they overlap some. Gunnison also form big towns, but not as big as Blacktail. Some basic ecology would suggest that some species with smaller colonies are less likely to have their population destroyed over huge areas.

Similar is Belding's ground squirrel in CA, NV, WA, and OR. They may have a wider range i dunno off hand. Alturas CA has an annual hunt and banquet with prizes and stuff. People come from around the world to blast em. Commies probably banned it by now, but once upon a time...My friends hunt it every year with lead free ammo, but I refuse to give my money to a fish and game department that spends it on banning hunting, fishing, and trapping.

There are also little ground squirrels. I don't know as much about them. Not sure how many species there are. Some guys i know hunt em on pivots in utah and call em ....diggers I think. I can't remember for sure. We have some here by vegas. People dump pumpkins and shoot em. I blast the little things when they come for the pumpkins a few days after Halloween.

I won this belt buckle in 1994 from "squirrel wars three" in cedarville. Shooting started Saturday morning and the body count was Sunday at noon. I turned in five gunny sacks full of squirrels totaling 507. I wish I had gotten a picture of the pile, it was impressive. I was interviewed by a reporter from Klamath falls, who asked me how many "bullets" my gun held. I responded one. She asked me again how many "bullets" does your gun hold. I responded again, one. This went on two more times, I don't think she could grasp the concept that I was shooting single shot, single feed. I quit going to cedarville to shoot because of the lead ban, that and I have plenty of places to shoot in Nevada with fewer restrictions. Most of the places I shoot, are going hard at Poison. We'll see if we have any places to shoot in the coming years. I don't think they can completely wipe them out as these little critters are quite resilient and poison is expensive. I've personally seen 11 babies in one mama, so it's a numbers game. What always amazed me, was how we could go back to the same field week after week and shoot thousands and thousands of squirrels, and go back next year and it's like we didn't have any impact on the numbers of them.

 

[Rick300]

I miss the Squirrel roundup but I still see most of the guys up there through the end of April

 

[STS]

I keep reading these posts about "scouting". Boy I don't know. I have been places were there wasn't any gas stations for 50 miles. Or a house for that matter. The idea that a guy is going to make a trip from say, Florida, and just drive around trying to find a John Deere dealership or a town you can see from the road, then locate the owner to get permission... I don't know. I'm sure it's feasible. But you better have two fuel tanks.

That's the point that I've been trying to make. Unless you've been in the rural parts of the 'prairie dog states,' it's hard to understand just how difficult it can be to first, locate a live town, and then get in touch with the land owner. I have ranches that I've shot on before, both p-dogs and coyotes, and not be able to check with the rancher when I get there. I have to move on to another piece of ground and come back another day. That's a time waster for me, and I live close by. It would be a trip killer for someone from back east. Fortunately for me, I have access to a gajillion acres (also known as a metric $hit ton) of land. The whole prairie dog shooting thing has changed significantly in the last decade. As I noted before, there are less dog towns around because of the plague, and some of the towns that I've shot for years have shrunk in size. I do know of some towns that are new, and some that have gotten larger, but in general, the overall numbers are way less than they were 20 years ago.
By no means am I trying to discourage anyone from making a trip out west to have a go at shooting some p-dogs. My intent in this discussion is to add a dose of reality to those who have visions of blissfully shooting several hundred rounds in a day at dumb dogs. They better be prepared to put in a lot of miles, and days, to find those scarce places like a lot of people would like them to think are available. And if they are lucky enough to find such a place, they better be ready to repeat all of the effort it took to find it next year because the town got poisoned, or the plague made another appearance.

 

[drover]

Thanks for saving me a lot of typing, I have been considering writing a similar respnse but you covered it so well that it would be difficult to add anything to it.

drover

 

[DirtySteve]

I would recommend something like this. Get on the Montana Cadastral check the eastern half of the State. Find areas of State and Federal land. Switch to satellite imagery and zoom in. Look for areas with small tan circles close together. That will be a prairie dog town. Find a bunch of them and then drive out and start shooting. Find a bunch because they could have been hit with the plague and wiped out.

Wyoming may have their Cadastral available too..

When I was looking for property to buy I got real good at locating property just for the pictures posted by the realtor s.

 

[ken158]

I too have shot p'dogs with Willie. While he did put us on dogs and kept us out of the rain, the dogs were gun shy and had been shot over. With this being my first time out, I didn't know any better. It was until a second trip with a different outfitter that I realized the experience was night and day difference. The second trip offered all the dogs we could shoot up close and they didn't duck down.

Willie's lodging accommodations was a motel inside Ft. Pierre while the second trip was a family homestead on the ranch. I enjoyed that much more than the motel.

I agree with the mention of Willie’s motel… What a dump and looks like a place that rents by the hour…

 

[Tommie]

Look for areas with small tan circles close together. That will be a prairie dog town.

Or those circles will be fire ant hills.
This is a massive bunch of ants. Scanning satellite images isn’t an exact science.

 

[58Marine]

Being from nc, we don't have them anywhere close that I know of. Where can I go to shoot Prarie dogs? Ive google searched it a little but didn't find out much as far as a place to go but did learn that the ones that have them absolutely hate them and can't kill them fast enough so don't think it would make much sense to pay an outfitter.

I've been to Lemon S. Dakota a few times but, it's been a while.
Hooked up with the local BLM manager. He had a list of the ranchers who welcomed PD shooters. At the time, BLM didn't allow poisoning on federal land. Had a really good time there.