A Prairie Dog Hunt On Old Rte 66

There are some things I know that maybe I just shouldn't try. Take Cowboy Action Shooting for instance. I know if I try it I'm gonna get hooked. I'm gonna end up having to buy thousands of bucks worth of guns and gear, loading equipment, and more. I mean who wouldn't love all that gear and an opportunity to use it all with a bunch of other "cowboys" and "cowgirls"? You know on second thought, maybe....well that's for another day. But it sort of parallels my feelings about prairie dog shooting. I thought well it's gonna take a bunch of gear, time and money to try it out. Well I was wrong...for the most part at least.

My hunting buddy Jon and I had both acquired some "AR" style rifles a while back. I built mine from scratch with pretty much top of the line parts from Black Weapons Armory, and Jon bought a standard Bushmaster M4 style rifle and made some minor modifications to it. The rifle I built is also M4 sized with a 16" barrel.

Neither rifle is exactly your standard long range P-Dog rig but we got a bug to try to shoot some dogs. The first challenge was to figure out which optic to use on my rifle. It's no secret I'm a huge fan of Leupold optics. They make some of the best quality glass in the industry. They are American made and they have some of the best customer service I have ever experienced. I had a tactical style MR/T Leupold on the rifle but it is more of a CQB type of scope so I needed a longer range scope to reach out the few hundred yards needed to pop prairie dogs. So I took the Leupold VX3 6.5 - 20x40mm scope off of my long range 300 WSM rifle and mounted it on the AR. Then I started testing ammo and what I found was that Hornady factory loaded 40grain VMax with a stated muzzle velocity of 3800 FPS, was super accurate in my rifle.

This was a bit of a surprise for me because in the past with other rifles I haven't had much luck with factory ammo in terms of accuracy, but this stuff was remarkable. As it turns out this ammo shot great in Jon's AR and his Remington VSSF as well so we ordered 1,600 rounds from Hornady and were off to Seligman AZ to try our hand on prairie dogs.

Seligman is a neat little tourist town located right on Old Rte 66 and looks like right out of the kids movie "Cars". We had done some reasearch and we had some specific places to check out based on the advice of some friends of ours including some Arizona Game and Fish department wildlife managers.
I had some other Leupold toys along with me including an RX-1000 rangefinder and a Kenai spotting scope both of which not only came in handy they are downright essential to prairie dog hunitng. Now this all seems obvious to those of you who are experienced prairie doggers but hey it was all new to me! But what wasn't obvious until I reassesed the hunt is that I was able to use alot of gear I already had to have a great hunt. The AR was built for fun and self defense and now I know I can shoot prairie dogs with it. The other gear is essentially big game (deer, elk, antelope) hunting equipment. Now to be fair I am pretty well hooked on this prairie dog thing now. So of course I used it as an excuse to trade my way into a Cooper Model 21 Phoenix in .223 and mounted a brand new Leupold 8.5 - 25x50mm with their varmint reticle in it. It is more than a tack driver at the range with the Hornady 40grain VMax factory loads. It shot 100 yard groups under 1/4" and 1/2" at 200 yards! I can't wait to get back to the prairie dog mounds with that Cooper!! I think it is amazing that 4 completely different rifles shot that Hornady ammo exceptionally well. I think it's remarkable what Hornady is producing. Hornady came out with a new .223 load under their Superfomance brand. It is a 55gr VMax at 3465 FPS and I'd love to see a 40gr VMax at about 4,000 FPS if they can do it.

All in all the hunt was very successful for a first time expedition. Between Jon, myself and his two teenage sons we killed a couple hundred prairie dogs. I have a distinct feeling we will be going on more prairie dog expeditions maybe Montana or the Dakotas next time.

In the meantime we also hooked up with a local varmint hunters club here in Tucson and went to their Prairie Dog silhouette match this past weekend. You shoot varying sized steel "dogs" at distances from 200 yards to 500 yards. So it REALLY tests you and your equipment. I was really impressed with the Leupold 8.5 - 25 scope with the varmint reticle. Once you get the hang of it hits become more and more likely. In the Cooper rifle the Hornady ammunition was predictably excellent. The guys in the match were also very impressed with the accuracy of the Hornady ammo as compared to their handloads. I would not be a bit surprised to see some Hornady boxes in their range bags at the next shoot! I can't wait to get back out there with the Cooper to see what it will do on real live "dogs".