204Ruger

Prairie dog shooting on public land has been kind of disappointing this year, so I pulled out the phone numbers of a couple of ranchers who have prairie dog towns on their private land. I finally made phone contact with the two ranchers after trying to talk to them for several days. Both of them gave me permission to shoot prairie dogs on their land. The one place is about 50 miles from Williston and the other is about 80+ miles. I got the wild hair at breakfast Tuesday morning to go down to the closest dog town and see what kind of prairie dog numbers existed. The rancher said he had let lots of folks shoot them there this year so I wasn’t expecting much action. I decided to use my Lilja barreled .17 Remington. That’s the one that I let my son use and I haven’t shot it at a PD or coyote for about four years. I took it down to my reloading room after breakfast and cleaned the barrel. I got a sandwich packed, several bottles of water, some soft drinks, cookies, and all the other things I take on a hunt all ready to go.

I had to go down to the gas station and fill my gas tank and I didn’t get on the road until about 2:00 p.m. and made it to the rancher’s yard by 3:00. I introduced myself and we chatted for a while and got to know one another. He mentioned again that he had let a lot of people shoot PDs, but thought there were still a bunch of them left. He told me to come out any time I wanted. He showed me the way to get out to the dog town and said there are PDs right out by the garage, bunches just north of our home and you just go ahead and shoot them. I asked him if he wanted me to get 440 yards away from his yard. He told me I could shoot them right from his yard if I wanted to. He just asked me to be careful and not shoot towards the farmstead. I assured him I would be careful

I parked my pickup in the shade of a hopper bottom bin, ate my sandwich, got all my stuff in my backpack and my rifle loaded. The Lilja barreled .17 Remington has a 6-24x44mm Burris Signature scope on it with the Daylight/Twilight feature. It is a darn good scope for both prairie dogs and coyotes. That was my main coyote gun until I bought the .204 Ruger in June of 2004. Anyway, before I even got my backpack up on my shoulders, I spotted 2 PDs about 100 yards to the west of my pickup. I found a dirt loading dock I could get up on and put those two critters out of their misery. I think I must have shot a dozen prairie dogs before I ever got much more than 100 yards away from his trailer house!!! Here’s a couple unlucky PDs I shot just a little northwest of the rancher’s trailer house!!



Here’s a closer view of the damage the 20 gr. V-Max bullets do when pushed at about 4,055 fps.



These are the only cartridges I have loaded up for this rifle at this time. I want to use to a wee bit heavier bullet with a better BC, but I have 400 of the 20 gr. Nosler HP factory seconds that I'll probably use in this rifle first. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing at 10 to 15 mph with gusts to 20 today, so I had a little wind deflection problem with these light-weight bullets, but I did OK.

I took a total of 57 shots today and missed on 12 of them. Of the 45 hits, two of those were confirmed doubles and I swore I got two additional doubles, but couldn’t find the second victim on those shots. So, I connected on 47 prairie dogs.

I normally have a pretty high hit percentage, but today I would dope the wind right on one shot and the next shot of the same distance and direction would miss by about 6 inches or so, based on where it looked like the bullet hit. I also missed a couple gimme shots of under 100 yards and those misses seemed to be high??? About three fourths of the way into the hunt I had two successive misses right after I had a hit a PD at that same distance and direction. I decided to check the brass!! WHOA!!! Those two casings had split necks. I checked some of the brass I had put back into the cartridge box and discovered more cracked necks. When I got home that night and checked the necks on all the casings I fired that day and found 10 casings with split necks!!! I think the shots I missed were caused by the necks splitting. Here’s a scan of three of those defective casings. The middle one is the absolute worst split and the other two are very representative of what the other seven split-necked casings looked like.



I had 6 casings in this bunch that I had turned down and intended to use in my tight-necked .17 Remington, but used them for the Lilja barrel instead. Normally, my casings with unturned necks have a loaded neck diameter of about .1935" to .194". I’m thinking those casings with partially turned necks and a loaded neck diameter of about .1915" may have had just a little too far to expand in the .202" neck chamber in my Lilja barrel!!! I have about 10 more loaded casings for this Lilja barreled rifle where I just did a skim neck turn and I think I’ll toss those just to be safe.

Anyway, I feel better about my shooting knowing that it was most likely the necks splitting that caused the bullets to miss on so many of my shots. I know I wiggled when I squeezed the trigger on two shots, but was pretty sure of my shots on all the rest. I was hitting prairie dogs out to 175 yards with about a 90º side wind on four of my shots. I also missed about four at that same distance and I’ll bet it was the split neck thing that got me.

The rancher has a black lab that came out into the dog town and visited me a couple times. The first time he came out he picked up a dead prairie dog and carried it back to the farm yard!!! I wish I would have had my wits about me and snapped a photo of him. He looked real proud of his find!!! The next time, he came out, he just nosed around and played with a couple dead prairie dogs and then headed back home.

The photo below is of the remains of a PD that was about 100 yards away, lying on top of his mound. I aimed a wee bit low to see if I could launch him so he would do some acrobatics. He definitely obliged me. He flew about 8 feet in the air and 10 feet back off the mound and did a couple flips as he went back. There were three separate piles of his innards strewn around on the ground about the same distance as the rest of his body traveled. I used yellow arrows to point to the piles of innards.



I was down to my last cartridge when I heard this little prairie dog being very, very rude. He was scolding me at the top of his lungs and saying things that were not very nice. I just had to teach him a lesson. He was only about 75 yards away and the little 20 gr. V-Max bullet really messed up his day, the mound, and the fence post also got a red mist paint job!!! This is my favorite photo of the day and I just titled it “Last Shot of the Day.”



The temperature got up to around 95 degrees today, but with the wind blowing like it was, it didn’t seem real hot. I drank plenty of water and took my time as I walked about the PD town. I didn’t get into even half of the dog town. It stretches from the rancher’s yard and goes out east of his place and north. It also stretches out to the west for maybe 1.25 miles. It is at least a half mile wide and maybe more in some places. Here’s another photo looking to the west in the middle part of the dog town. The town stretches out another half mile west of that ridge of hills at the top of the photo.



I ran out of ammo at about 6:00 p.m. and went to the rancher’s trailer and thanked him and his wife. I had a good day.

That was awesome Silverfox! hey, I think I must have had some of those split necks last week when I was shooting near Lewistown because I missed a couple times.