Northlander and I took a long drive from the East side of Minnesota to the Western edge of North Dakota for prairie dogs, (580) miles one way. We were looking for new spots to hunt in the National Grasslands or on private land. We found some wonderful people in the small town of Watford N.D. They and Silverfox had given us some prairie dog towns in the area to try hunting on.
On the first day we spent most of the day scouting around the North Dakota Badlands out from Watford in the grasslands. The area we were in has Bighorn Sheep; we did not see any sheep on any day we were out. The area also has Mule deer; we saw a few each day even a couple of nice bucks in velvet. We did see Fox and that we something we didn’t expect to see.
The day was great, the area was beautiful, we did find some dog towns but the dogs were “very well educatedâ€Â. Translation by the time we got out of the car and set the benches up all the dogs within 350 yards were down and would not come up until we left.
Day 2
We traveled on some lightly used “two lane Goat paths†in the grasslands only to find the dogs out here were just as educated in the outback as they were in the more accessible areas.
So we went back to some private land areas we had found on day one. The dogs were also educated here, but we found if we parked the car on one side of the hill we could hunt on the other side from the benches and the dogs were not too bad. The closest dogs were now about 200 yards. This made it obvious to us that the prairie dogs did not like my Green Explorer, so we keep it out of sight.
On this day with the slight wind ~10 mph Northlander used his fast twist 22-250 and some 69 grain SMK’s to shoot his longest dog yet. I marked the benches with my GPS and walked out to the dead p-dog and marked again it came out at 702 yards. This beat his old mark by ~120 yards. At that range the 69 grain SMK did not open up much, as you would expect, but still worked well, especially when you shoot them in the head.
Not to be out done I took out my long range rifle. I have a Remington 700 that was worked up by Darrell Holland in a 10-twist .243 AI. This rifle has one of my 8x32 Burris’s on it for the longer ranges. The rifle shoots the 87 grain V-Max’s into nice little groups. I started warming up on the close dogs (450 to 600 yards) and once warmed up I started looking for some longer yardage dogs to shoot for.
I spotted some “unlucky†dogs out past Northlanders last kill at over 700 yards. With the help of a “very unlucky†dog I pushed my longest shot to 930 yards that day. Northlander was less than happy and made some comment about building up an 8-twist 6-6.5X47, to shoot the 95 thru 115 grain bullets for next year.
Day 3 found us with a light rain in the AM and WIIIIINNND 30+ mph. We had to forgo the benches and walk around the prairie dog town with-out any bi-pods this made for difficult shooting. Between the wind and the heat, did I mention the heat; it got to over 95 this day. Most of the prairie dogs stayed down, so we left early that day.
Day 4 light rain over night ended before 7 AM, but we had to wait for the clouds to clear. The sky did not clear until 10 AM and by then the wind 25+ mph had come up again. After our walking lessons from day 3 we tried sitting behind our buckets and putting our front rest on the top. Using this idea we had good luck when we shot less than 250 yards. This is not easy for older men to do for long, hard on your back humped over a bucket.
Back on the goat paths for the PM, we found a prairie dog town that had not been shot too much, and in the bowl the wind was not too bad. We set up the benches and shot the rest of the afternoon until the rain came back. Not wanting to be caught in the “mud in the middle of nowhere†we packed up and went back to the motel.
It was fun, but we would like to find an area with a higher dog density that we had seen. In 4 days I had shot about 225 rounds and Northlander had fired even less than I did.
We finished packing the car that night and headed home the next AM.
22 Mag
Oh yes I have no Hero shot; but I hope a picture of Northlander from your 2003 trip to South Dakota will work.
