Prairie Dogging!

Visions of the Way it Was, Circa 1962
Prairie Dogging!

By Tom Dorigatti

I have mentioned in prior blogs that being born and raised in Wyoming; I grew up with a fishing pole in one hand and a rifle in the other.  The hunting that I did with my father was for food most of the time.  However, we also did some varmint hunting, specifically, prairie dog hunting; long range prairie dog shooting, in fact.  Our weapons of choice were the .22 rim fire Long Rifle and the .222 Remington long range varmint round. 

Cost of Ammunition back in the early 1960’s:

I might mention that back then, a “brick” of 500 rounds of .22 LR shells cost us $5!  If we bought hollow-points, they were $6 for a brick of 500 rounds.  The cost of reloading the .222 Remington was less expensive than 30-06 or .300 Magnum cartridges, roughly around $9 per 100 rounds.

For those of you not familiar with the .222 Remington, it was a round specifically designed for varmint shooting at long range.  We also had a .220 Swift, but quickly found out that it was too “hot” and that the barrel and chamber were worn out quickly (300-400 rounds and accuracy went to pot!), so we quickly got rid of the .220 Swift and went with the .222 Remington, or as we called it, “the triple deuce.”  Even at that, when economic times got tough, we ended up selling off that .222 Remington too, dang it all anyways.  The rifle was fun too shoot; not only for long range prairie dog hunting, but from a bench or even the sitting or prone positions! 

 Specifications for the .222 Remington Cartridge:

(Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.222_Remington  )  I won’t repeat the entire thing, since you can look it up if you are interested.  I’ll simply talk about my experiences with this low recoil (did I tell you I HATE recoil, haha?).  The cartridge was designed in 1950 by Mike Walker and manufactured by Remington.  It is a Rimless bottleneck center fire cartridge. The bullet diameter is .224 and the cartridge length is just over 2”.  If I recall correctly, we used 50 grain bullets out of the rifle we had which gave it some great knock down power for small varmints.  The cartridge was tried for military use and eventually, some other changes were made, based upon a stretched .222 case, and adopted, along with the M-16 rifle (.223 Remington).  You don’t find this .222 Remington round easily anymore, but hey, I’m talking the early 1960’s for this blog!  We had the rifle and used it effectively for long range varmint shooting.  Today, the .222 is the parent case for the .221 Fireball, the fastest production handgun cartridge!

The .222 Remington still is very, very popular in Europe, where gun manufacturers like Sako, Tikka and Sauer chamber rifles for the .222 caliber. Firearms that are usually chambered for the .223 Remington/5.56×45mm NATO caliber are often re-chambered for the .222 Remington for sale in countries where laws restrict or even totally forbid civilian ownership of "military calibers". Two countries that have such laws include France and Spain.

Rules of the Game for Shooting Prairie Dogs:

Before I get into a great story of accuracy and a super long distance kill, I have to talk about the rules of the “game” we played while shooting prairie dogs.

This may sound harsh, but trust me when I tell you that back in the early 1960’s, prairie dog cities were very common around the area where I grew up, and there were literally thousands of the critters out there in countless numbers of large and small prairie dog cities.  Other varmints included badgers, coyotes, bob-cats, and an occasional mountain lion.  We could literally walk into the middle of a “dawg city,” sit down with our rifles and just wait ‘em back out of their holes.  Then the shootin’ started!  But you gotsta have rules!

Rule #1:  The .222 was for use on p-dogs, gophers, and other varmints at ranges in excess of 150 yards.

Rule #2:  You get ONE shot, if you don’t get a kill, then you lose your turn and get a punch to the shoulder.  If you get a kill, then it is still your turn.  ONE shot per dawg and you had to go to the next one.  (NOTE: one reason for the ONE shot was that we had experiences with the .220 Swift burning up a barrel quickly and didn’t want to screw up the barrel on the .222 in spite of it “only” shooting at 3,000 fps instead of 4,000 fps! Besides, there were plenty of dawgs out there, and we had no reason to take them all out and spoil future excursions.  We never hunted the same prairie dog city two days or two weekends in a row either.

Rule #3, all “dawgs” were in a safe zone if closer than 50 yards.  We did not shoot dawgs closer than 50 yards away!

Rule #4:  The .22 rim fire Long Rifle was used from 50 to 150 yards; the same one shot rule and penalties applied. We did not burn up the .222 for “chip shots,” haha.  By the way, a 150 yard shot with a .22 Long Rifle can be most challenging, especially in the wind!  We’ve shot ‘em at longer distances, too!

10 Things you Don’t Know About Prairie Dogs:
Check this out.  You should enjoy it!

http://news.softpedia.com/news/10-Things-You-Did-Not-Know-About-Prairie-Dogs-65579.shtml

A side note about prairie dogs: 

Not many know this, but the prairie dog will eat just about anything, including their own species.  In addition, mother prairie dogs will eat their weakest or sickly young and also feed it to the stronger ones! It also wasn’t all uncommon to come out a few days later passing through the same dawg city to get to another one and see them, along with the Black-Footed Ferrets eating on the carcasses of the downed dawgs!  We tried to never shoot black footed ferrets, but these creatures look and act a lot like the prairie dog and actually prey upon the prairie dogs.  For this reason, sometime around the late 1980’s or early 1990’s, the black footed ferret was protected and shooting prairie dogs was banned, and I think Colorado still bans the hunting of the black tailed prairie dog for sport.

Guided Prairie Dog Hunts in Wyoming

In Wyoming, however there are actually hunting guides that have prairie dog hunts!  One such place is the Bar-Nunn Hunting out of Laramie, Wyoming (http://www.bar-nunn.com/wyoming-prairie-dog-hunt/ ).  For those that may be interested in this, here is a link for the Top 10 Outfitters and Guides for Wyoming Prairie Dog Hunts.
(http://huntingtop10.com/Wyoming/Hunting/Prairie-Dog-Hunting/  ).  They say to bring two or three rifles with you, because you could go through 300-500 rounds a day and you need to let the barrels cool!  I don’t know if they allow the use of the trusty .222 Remington or hotter cartridges or not.  Again, my blog deals with the 1960’s and another story from the early 1980’s.  Of course, there are prairie dog hunts in South Dakota, Kansas, Colorado (not for sport, but you can get guided hunts), Texas, and Montana.

The Story of the “longest shot.”

The story I’m about to tell is true.  The names have not been changed to protect neither the innocent nor the guilty.  This is not a “tale.”  It actually happened!

My father and I decided to go to a prairie dog city we knew about that was just east of an old abandoned coal mining town of Winton, Wyoming.  We had to cross a decrepit bridge and drive a few miles East towards Superior, Wyoming on a rickety old road to get to the dawg city.  We always wanted to get there early in the morning for prime time dawg hunting, because the wind came up around 10:30AM and made getting true shots very difficult and we had too much wasted ammunition and lucky shots!  Remember, Rule #2?  ONE shot, so you couldn’t Kentucky windage in with more than one shot per dawg; that is a no-no!

So we are sitting in the middle of the prairie dog city and had been plinking away with the .22 and sometimes the .222.  Hitting and missing and thumping each other on the shoulder when whomever missed their shot.  After quite some time, my father spots this prairie dog way, way, way out there.  It is my turn.  He tells me where the prairie dog is sitting and I quickly find it in my scope.  The rifle is sighted in for 250 yards, but this dawg is OUT THERE.  My dad figures it is easily 350 yards; I’m thinking more like 375, but this is one hell of a poke, even with the .222!  There isn’t any wind to speak of, so, I take aim, raise the cross-hairs on the scope well above the dawg’s head and squeeze off the round.  My father calls out, “You nailed him!  Great shot!”  I’m thinking, “I sure saw a lot of dust.”  I then look again thru the scope and the prairie dog is indeed down and kicking up a storm of dust.  I told my dad I had to go see where I hit him and off I go.  I find the prairie dog, dead as a door-nail.  However, I was right.  I had not hit the prairie dog with the bullet.  I had shot short, and piece of shale (rock) had splintered off and lodged right in the forehead of the prairie dog!  To the day my father passed away, he never knew and was never told that my “great shot” was not made by the bullet hitting that prairie dog in the head, but rather a one in a thousand “rock skip shot.”  I had obviously missed the dawg by shooting well short, and got lucky due to the ground conditions!  TRUE STORY!

We had pretty good success that day, all in all.  Don’t remember how many good shots we both made, but both of us had a lot of one shot and misses, too.

Forward to 1982 or so.

I left Wyoming for college in 1967, and for many years, we never went back to the above mentioned prairie dog city.  While we did hunt prairie dogs from time to time, my father no longer had the .222 or anything like that for a varmint rifle.  The family did have a .22 Lever Action Marlin Lever Action and a couple of .22 pistols.  One is a Ruger “Single-Six” revolver that my father purchased new around 1956, and a High Standard Semi-Automatic that I never did shoot.  I don’t even know when my father purchased the weapon.

So, let’s fast forward to about 1982 or 1983.  My oldest daughter, Kari has always been one for shooting guns and catching fish (I might mention that she catches and cleans her own fish…but won’t eat them under any circumstances.  She follows the “You caught them, you clean them” rule to the hilt, too!  She nailed me but good on that when, after she finished cleaning her trout, I asked her for help (she was about 10 years old at the time), she got up, looked at me and said, “Dad, you caught ‘em, you clean ‘em.”  TRUE STORY!!  She also liked to shoot my 16 gauge double barreled shotgun; both barrels at the same time!  She thought that it was “cool” to do that!

Different rules:

Since Kari was only 12 or 13 years old, we had to modify the “Rules” for dawg shooting just a bit. The minimum distance for us this day was to be 50 yards and max distance was 100 yards, give or take.  The rule about the fist to the shoulder for a miss was that the thump on the shoulder wasn’t to be hard, just firm, more as a tease.  As you will soon see, however, there was to be no thumping Kari on the arm for quite some time!  Now, I will say that Kari’s shooting form wasn’t the best.  However, just like her mother, Kari follows instructions when it comes to shooting guns!  Put the cross-hairs right where you want to hit, steady the rifle, take in a breath, let some of it out, slowly squeeze the trigger without jerking it, wait for the shot to break, and follow through.

So, my oldest brother and I think this is going to be a cake walk and him and I will get a lot of shooting and soft thumping Kari!  That is what we got for doing our own thinking!

We were nice guys and let Kari go first, figuring she’d get one shot and miss and then Pete and I would have our turns that would go on quite some time!  Well, Kari’s first 10 shots were all scores/kills!  She missed on her 11^th shot, and not by much, and that dawg was out there a ways, too.  I got one or two and missed, and got thumped.  Pete got a couple and missed, and got thumped.  Kari’s turn again.  I don’t recall exactly, but it seems like she wasn’t going to miss unless we forced her on the super long shots of 100 yards plus!  Lousy form and all, this gal could shoot that .22!!!  She had the time of her life out there shooting dawgs, but unfortunately we haven’t been out together for this since.  Of course with the prairie dogs being protected all the years since and the family being spread out; we haven’t had the opportunity either.

Footnote:  Kari’s high school had “riflery” as a PE requirement.  They shot .177 caliber pellet rifles.  This was right up Kari’s alley, but she didn’t tell anyone that she knew how to shoot and shoot well.  So, what do you suppose happens in PE class when they qualify with the pellet rifle?  You got it!  Kari proceeded to kick butt, including beating the teacher’s score by a wide margin!  We still get a laugh out of that one.  Yep, Kari shoots like a girl; a danged accurate shooting girl, “bad form” and all.

Wish I had a photo of her shooting the .22 to share, but I don’t!