Prairie Dog Hunting

[chucker17]

Greetings:

My brother and I went on our first prairie dog hunt this weekend. One day on private ground in South Dakota. Most shots were from 225 yards to 300 yards with either the wind behind us or blowing left to right (15 mph). We had approximately 10 confirmed hits. What would be considered "good" shooting? We shot approximately 150 times. Seems to be terrible shooting, but we still had a blast. As the day progressed, our shooting did improve. Just wondering what the "expectation" should be.

Thanks.

[Brent]

Man i wish I would even be able to get 30 shots off around here. The only dogs that I can find only have about 15-20 total dogs in the little colony and once I killed 5 I probably wouldn't see anymore for a week.

My buddies mom used to have a bunch of dogs out in a pasture on her land. But he never hunted so he would drop poison down the holes and cover it over with dirt. By the time I knew about this land there was only 3 dogs left. I got 1 and wounded another, o well it was still fun.

[rooster52]

I and my two sons once went to a ranch by New Castle Wyoming ,Went thru 800 223 rounds in a 3 day shoot not counting the 22 rimfires we shot.I have been back to the ranch twice since and have never had shooting like that first time.The rancher said the plaque killed them off and have never come back.

[chucker17]

I should clarify what I meant by "good" shooting. What should be the expectation for ratio of prairie dogs shot per total shots taken? In addition, it was probably closer 125 shots at live targets. This hunt wasn't planned real well. I live (and grew up) in South Dakota and my brother is back for the Fourth of July. I lined this up at the last minute. We shot my Thompson Center encore 223. I had three different loads and shot all of them. We took turns shooting while the other spotted dogs with the binos. Like I said earlier, it was a blast. We seemed to have an extreme amount of near misses!

The colony we hunted was on approximately 80 acres which was split by a draw. We shot the "north unit" first then went to the "south unit", then repeated the sequence.