Poisoned Prairie Dogs

[JSH]

You can always tell when winter boredom sets in by the reserection of old threads. Happens every year. Yet there are times that the same party does it over and over. I find it an annoyance much like swatting mosquitoes.

$2 per hole to poison. Must be small towns and overly wealthy land owners. I wouldn’t even want to think how many days it would take to count and cover even %80 percent of the holes and mounds.

 

[L.Sherm]

I talked with a wheat farmer about 10 years ago when I was shooting sage rats on his property he told me he spent 20,000 dollars on poison that year because he was tired of spending 20,000 every year fixing equipment from the holes they were making

 

[flatlander]

I've used the phos-toxin pellets in my own pasture when young dogs from a neighbor's dog town started a new town on my ground. I caught them before the new town got very big and wiped them out with one application. This method is by far the most effective I've ever seen, though you've got to be extremely careful while handling the pellets.

As an aside - when I was in high school 50+yrs ago, I bought a new M70 sporter in 243 for PD, coyotes, and deer. Bought WWII surplus H4831 from the same old retired rancher who sold me this rifle for 80 cent/lb, and loaded Speer 80gr PSP bullets for dogs & coyotes. Had a used Weaver K4 on the rifle, and thought I had the world by the tail on a downhill pull...there were good dog towns everywhere - deciding which one to shoot in was the hardest decision we had to make on a Sunday afternoon. Fast forward to about six years ago - ordered in a Rem M700CDL SS fluted rifle in 17 Fireball, pulled the bbl and sent it to Bartlein to have them copy the contour on a 20 cal 1-12tw blank. Chambered the Bartlein for 20 VarTarg, trued the action, bedded it in that pretty CDL stock, replaced the OEM trigger with a Rifle Basix, and mounted a Nikon 6-24x50 Monarch scope. I was all ready to go find some dogs and let this fine little rig do its business. The only dog town within 20mi was so over-hunted that you'd be lucky to get one shot per hour. Reality set in, and I wound up selling that pretty little VarTarg in the classified here.

 

[Tommie]

 

[searcher]

For you people that are going to NE. prairie dog shooting....Here's a heads up. I just got this e-mail from a friend in Lincoln NE.

WELL I made it back, that is the good news. The bad news is this. the land we thought he owned he only rented and it got poisoned 2 months ago along with most of the ranch land out that way. We went south and east from Holdredge to the Kansas border and then back North and west to Atlanta stopped and asked in most of the few places we did find Dogs only to be turned away. We only found 2 good towns and 4-5 very small ones We shot 2 dogs between 3 of us all day . The weather was 46 and cloudy with 20 plus mph winds. Yes I am very discouraged. I guess the reason for all the poisonings is because the EPA changed the rules about handling the poison and soon/now you have to be Certified to buy/ handle it, so the farmers got it done before the change went into effect. We may or probably will find some places to shoot but I really doubt if I can make anything work by June 11 I have some other possibilities in some other areas but I haven't seen them this year and they may have been poisoned as well.We looked at 90-100 dog towns today and only found 2 good ones. The one guy had a 3/4 section of them and he said "I don't want anybody shooting at them because I don't want them to spread". There wasn't any point in arguing with him because I don't believe he could understand the truth. We do have a couple of slim shots at some dog towns but I wouldn't bet the farm.I'm sorry I tried and I will continue to work on it but I never guessed I would see that kind of wide spread poisoning

If you know of a rancher who has lots of dogs on his land and has his land up for sale - I'd be very appreciative to get his name and number - or that of the Realtor. I, and my buddies are looking to buy such a place just for hunting purposes - so no houses, crops or first-class cattle pasture needed - though would be OK.

 

[40X Guy]

I was going to stay out of this discussion but I think it's appropriate to offer some facts for the sake of clarity. First off, there are poisons and then there are POISONS. By that I mean there are treated grains that are available to non licensed users like ranchers. Then there are extremely effective toxic substances that are only available to certified and licensed applicators. Those two substances are used in entirely different manors. The grains are scattered around the hole in the hope that the p-dogs will eat them. The controlled chemicals are put directly in the hole. I have a good friend who is approved to apply controlled chemicals by the state of South Dakota. The poison that he uses is called PhosToxin. It comes in pellet form in a sealed can and is introduced directly into the hole, injected with water and the hole is closed with dirt. This chemical reacts with water, including water vapor in the air, and IMMEDIATELY goes through a sublimation from solid to a gas. It's the gas that kills the vermin and it does it in a very short period of time. You can take one of the pellets and set it on top of a fence post and it will gasify from water vapor in the air in a couple of hours. Put water on the pellet and it's gone in a minute at most.
As you can see when the poison is applied underground (it goes down the hole in a piece of fiberoptic cable pipe and water follows) and the hole is closed the opportunity for other animals to be killed is virtually nonexistent. I have helped him poison several dog towns over the years and have never seen any evidence of collateral damage nor any dogs that survived the treatment. It is virtually 100% effective. Another bit of info from the landowners viewpoint is that it costs $2 per hole to poison a dog town. Next time you are in a big town look at the number of holes and do the math on what kind of expense the landowner incurs trying to control the population.
Poison grain is playing games with the dogs. Using the controlled chemicals is no game and will accomplish the end goal.

I had no idea how they do it, I thank you for the info..

Frank

 

[jwcrabb]

I had an awesome place up in north Texas to shoot Pdogs years ago. The ranchers had always tried to poision them in different ways, but with limited success. And of course it was expensive. But about 7-8 years ago they found out that if they drilled the pellets in like planting seeds, it was extremely effective. That was the end of my awesome place! In one year they wiped out the whole town.

 

[284winner]

For you people that are going to NE. prairie dog shooting....Here's a heads up. I just got this e-mail from a friend in Lincoln NE.

WELL I made it back, that is the good news. The bad news is this. the land we thought he owned he only rented and it got poisoned 2 months ago along with most of the ranch land out that way. We went south and east from Holdredge to the Kansas border and then back North and west to Atlanta stopped and asked in most of the few places we did find Dogs only to be turned away. We only found 2 good towns and 4-5 very small ones We shot 2 dogs between 3 of us all day . The weather was 46 and cloudy with 20 plus mph winds. Yes I am very discouraged. I guess the reason for all the poisonings is because the EPA changed the rules about handling the poison and soon/now you have to be Certified to buy/ handle it, so the farmers got it done before the change went into effect. We may or probably will find some places to shoot but I really doubt if I can make anything work by June 11 I have some other possibilities in some other areas but I haven't seen them this year and they may have been poisoned as well.We looked at 90-100 dog towns today and only found 2 good ones. The one guy had a 3/4 section of them and he said "I don't want anybody shooting at them because I don't want them to spread". There wasn't any point in arguing with him because I don't believe he could understand the truth. We do have a couple of slim shots at some dog towns but I wouldn't bet the farm.I'm sorry I tried and I will continue to work on it but I never guessed I would see that kind of wide spread poisoning

Ya that seems to be the trend in prairie dog eradication lately. I had a N/S Dakota prairie dog shooting location that I utilized. The rancher told me for several years that his clients didn't kill enough to make a difference so the other local ranchers considered poisoning them in the future. Well it happened. I called to schedule a shoot a few years ago and he said that they were poisoned and there wasn't any dogs to shoot. Bad for shooters, good for ranchers. Didn't help my buddy's business tho. He had a lot of scheduled shooters for prairie dogs that summer.

 

[Will Henry]

I remember reading stories moaning about poisoning of PD towns sixty years ago. Agriculture is not an environmentally friendly enterprise and all wildlife is an abomination in the eye of the corporate farmer, especially. This is the way things are. Not saying it's right or wrong, just that it IS.
Personally, I think, if a landowner wants to poison his own ground, I reckon he should be allowed as long as the contamination is not permanent and as long as disclosure is made in the event of a sale.
Everyone who hunts anything should be a bit of an environmentalist if he wants his pastime to endure. WH

 

[redrockranger]

I was told by a S.D. rancher that oats is not part of a PD dietary menu. He spoke of pre baiting with untreated oats. Week or two later came back with the poison oats.

 

[Will Henry]

We had a family of badgers move onto our place and, inside of two years, it has gotten extremely difficult to find a ground squirrel. The badgers dig up the rodents and eat them year 'round. For a few years, we had a dog which would kill the badgers but after he was gone, the badgers had free reign. WH

 

[fourpower]

I live in Oregon and have been shooting sage rats for many years! Last year i went over to shoot and everybody was using poision cabbage! Drove over 700 miles and seen 1 rat and only 3 mounds. The rancher where i have been hunting for over 45 years said that they had over a 98 percent kill last year!