ND PD Hunt on 8-8-2014--Two parts

[Silverfox]

It's been a little over a month since I last posted about a PD hunt. The wife and I went on an Alaskan Cruise/Land Tour for about 12 days so I've been out of circulation. This story is a bit long, as usual, so it will take a couple of posts to get it all in.

The weather forecast for the area I wanted to go for shooting targets and prairie dogs was extremely favorable. The winds were supposed to be real tame and temperatures were predicted to get up to 90º. The calm winds sounded great, but I wasn’t so sure 90º was going to be a joy for this old man!!! It had been over a month since I had been out testing loads and shooting a few prairie dogs and I was suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms. I got a very early start this morning and found there was a bit of a traffic jam at the intersection of US Highway 2 and ND Highway 85. It took me about 10 minutes from the time I hit the long waiting line of trucks, cars and pickups all trying to head south on Highway 85. There were lots of 25 MPH zones and some 40 MPH zones on the road between Williston and Alexander so it was very s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w going. In spite of the slow traffic I couldn’t help but smile at the prospect of a nice sunny day and the thoughts about a good day of load testing and shooting prairie dogs. I had taken three rifles along and bunch of different loads I needed to shoot through those rifles and I had two different .204 Rugers along for prairie dog eradication purposes.

I finally got down into the dog town around 8:10 a.m. and the grass was very wet so I was happy I was going to do my load testing now so the grass would dry up when I got after shooting prairie dogs. I was also happy I hadn’t traveled down here on Thursday, because the trail was still a bit muddy today and would have been a sloppy mess on Thursday. I had a bunch of cattle near where I wanted to set my target boxes and with some gentle persuasion they moved way over the hill to the west.



I set up my target boxes and started shooting my test loads. Once again the tailgate of my pickup served as my shooting bench. On this trip I had my chronograph along so it took me a while to get that all set up so I was shooting bullets the proper height above the electronic eyes and I had that set up and ready to go by 8:58 a.m. and the temperature was around 67º.

The first rifle I shot was my old Savage 12VLP in .204 Ruger that I had a super match grade stainless steel 1 in 11 twist Pac-Nor barrel installed and had the BLACKNITRIDE™ treatment done on the barrel. The second rifle I was going to test was my Stiller Predator Action .17 Remington with a SS Lilja 1 in 9 twist barrel. I pulled it out of the case, set it up on the tailgate and my jaw just about dropped to the ground at what I saw—THE BOLT WAS MISSING!!!!! Well, that was one rifle I wouldn’t be testing today. I finished up shooting the last of the test loads around 2:00 p.m. I also took some time to get my point of impact set on my other Savage 12VLP .204 Ruger with a #6 contour super match grade stainless steel 1 in 11 twist Pac-Nor barrel using my 40 gr. V-Max load of 27.2 gr. of H4895. That’s the rifle I’d use on PDs today. I had done a quick cleaning job on the barrel of my Savage Target action .204 Ruger and needed to check the point of impact on that rifle too. I use 39 gr. Sierra BKs with hBN coating seated .005" off the lands and pushed down the barrel by 27.2 gr. of IMR 8208 XBR fired up by Remington 7½ primers in that rifle. I’m using Nosler brass with the neck walls turned to about .0111" thick all the way around and I’m using a .225 TiN bushing in my Redding Type S die. I have a Nikon Monarch 6.5-24x50mm scope on this rifle with the Nikoplex reticle. It has 1/8" clicks. My objective was to get this rifle shooting 1 inch high at 100 yards. After shooting 15 shots I still didn’t have it shooting to my satisfaction, so I put it in the case knowing I’d have to do some barrel cleaning on that one. I had used it on prairie dogs on my last outing on July 5, 2014, and had not cleaned it like I should have. Lesson learned and 15 rounds of ammo wasted.

Once I got the Savage target action in the case I drove to my target boxes and loaded them up. I parked in the shade of a couple of big trees and got ready to eat lunch at 2:22 p.m. There weren’t any prairie dogs near where I was having lunch so I didn’t get to snap off any shots during my lunch break like I did back on July 5. I was thinking about taking a 20 minute nap, but decided to get going to the south to the next PD town. I left that spot at 2:50 p.m. and got to a parking spot around 3:00 and began getting gear together for the hike down to the creek and the crossing of the creek which was not quite 3 feet deep at the deepest spot. The water was flowing fairly fast, but there definitely weren’t any white water rapids in this stream. I got down to the creek bed and took off my boots and put on my chest waders. Here’s a look at the path I took to get across the creek.



On my first trip across I took my backpack and my boots. I put them down near a nice shady spot and went back and got my rifle. The photo below gives you a look at where I hung my chest waders up to dry with my pickup across the creek on the west southwest side of this location. The red X is just above my pickup parking spot. There are two towels on top of my waders which are hanging across a branch.



I got the chest waders off and hung up in the tree and stopped to have a drink of ice cold water. Those waders were pretty hot, but the water I went through was nice and cool, but it was good to have those heavy suckers off my feet. The temperature at this time was about 90º. I had one box of 44 unfired .204 Ruger 40 gr. V-Max shells and another box with 50 shells. At 3:52 p.m. I started walking to the east hoping to find some PDs to shoot.

I had about 800 plus yards to walk to get to the NW end of this dog town. Here’s a photo of the area I was heading towards. The yellow arrow points close to where the dog town starts on the NW end and it stretches along the bottom of the light colored clay butte to the right of the arrow for about 3/4 of a mile.



I was busting through some thick brush and when I got to the first place I wanted to shoot I noticed there were 3 shells missing from my shell holder I have on the butt of my stock so I had only 41 shells left to shoot from that box!!! The grass was high and I used my shooting sticks and at the first shot which blasted the PD into smithereens, all the other PDs went down. I backed out of there and headed further east, but the tall grass was making it almost impossible to see the PDs. I set up on my shooting sticks again and noticed I had lost the lock nuts on the little bolt that I use as the hinge!!! Man, if it weren’t for bad luck today, I’d probably have no luck at all!!! I managed to shoot 2 more PDs and put the shooting sticks away for the day. I decided I’d have to get to prairie dog mounds and use those instead of my sticks.

NOTE: If you have been able to see the time and date stamp on the bottom of the photos you might have noticed that the time on the photos doesn’t match the time I am listing in this narrative. In the photo above, I said I was heading that direction at about 3:52 p.m. and the photo above says it was 12:46 p.m. The reason for the 3-hour difference is that I was on a 13-day cruise/land tour of Alaska from July 13 through the 25th and had my camera’s time set to Alaska Time instead of Central Daylight Savings time. I forgot to turn it to CDST.

[Silverfox]

Here's the rest of the story!!!

On my way to the east I stopped to take some blossom photos. There were more blossoms out there, but it was too doggone hot to be taking blossom photos so these two will have to do.




I had some excellent shooting today. Each place I set up on a PD mound I was able to shoot 4 or 5 PDs before moving on to the next mound. My shots ranged in distance from 40 yards on out to 175 yards, but most of the shots were in the 100 yard range. Easy pickings. Around 5:52 I headed for the far east end of the PD town where there is a little hillside on the east side of the barbed wire fence.



That has always been a very good spot for me. I crept through a ravine to get to the SE end of the dog town and crawled up over the bank to a grass covered PD mound and took my first shot at 5:55 p.m. I took the last of 13 shots at 6:15 and had gone 13 PDs for 13 shots. I could have shot maybe 4 or 5 more, but I ran out of shells and had to go back to my backpack for more. While I was there I took a break in the shade and had a little trail mix and a good long drink of ice cold water. I don’t care what anyone else says, I say, “This prairie dog shooting is hard work!!!” BUT IT IS ALSO A WHOLE LOT OF FUN!!!

So far on the day I had taken 35 shots and killed 35 prairie dogs. I had 6 shells left in the first box and put 5 of them in my magazine and one in the shell holder on the stock.

At 6:37 I started walking to the west northwest to get to a little valley that is just on the north side of the big clay buttes that run on the north side of the bigger dog town.



On my way to that colony, I shot 6 more PDs on the hillside I had just nailed 13 PDs on. Since I was out of shells, I stopped and opened the box of 50 shells and loaded the magazine and shell holder on the stock and headed west. I shot at 4 more PDs on my way to the north valley and hit on 3 shots and missed on one. I got to the little ridge overlooking the north valley and had fabulous shooting opportunities. I took a total of 13 shots in that little valley. I hit on 11 of those shots with one of those shots giving me my first and only double on the day. I missed on my last two shots and those weren’t tough shots either. I checked the suppressor, it was just a little bit loose—enough to cause missed shots, but I was done for today.

It was 7:40 p.m. when I started back to the pickup. I got to where I had my waders stashed at 8:00 p.m. and by 8:30 I was across the creek, had all my stuff loaded in the pickup and ready to go back home. I started back to Williston at 8:34 p.m. and pulled into the driveway at 10:10 p.m. I didn’t get to shoot a big bunch of PDs, but got enough shooting to keep me happy. I also got some good readings on velocities and accuracy for the loads I tested. The temperature in direct sunlight got up to 103.4º today and guess where I was for most of the day?!?!?! I wasn’t in the shade very much!!! If I kept my Caldwell Wind/Temp monitor out of direct sunlight I was getting 90º to 93º readings.

I took a total of 58 shots at prairie dogs today. I hit on 54 singles, 1 double and missed on three shots so I killed 56 prairie dogs with those 58 shots. Now, I have four rifle barrels to get cleaned up before my next outing. I’m getting closer to figuring out what loads I will use in the guns with the BLACKNITRIDE™ treated barrels but will still need a couple more trips to the range to settle on loads. In case you think I forgot, here’s the “Hero Photo” for your enjoyment!!!



Thanks for coming along on my little outing.

[Bill K]

Great, as usual. Looking forward to "the rest of the story" as someone used to say. Thank you Silverfox. BIll K

[dungheap]

Geez, Silverfox, if you're a "hunt 'n' peck-er," it probably took you as long to write that essay and post all those neat pics as it took to actually shoot the PDs.

You make me so-o-o jealous. That's the kind of outing we just dream of these days.

The part about the missing bolt reminds me of a deer hunting trip years ago, where my buddy opened his gun case opening morning only to realize that he had grabbed his lever action .22 instead of his .30-30! Fortunately, our host had a spare rifle along. Unfortunately, my buddy wasn't used to scoped rifles, and when he jumped a nice buck on the morning of the second day, he missed, stating "all I could see in the scope was hair."

[georgeld]

Sounds like a nice long day of it.
Had it cooled off by the time you got home?
Ever seen 'em out in the moonlight? haha!
Nice of you to share this with us Leroy.
Great pics as always.

[albertacoyotecaller]

Living the life!

Great read after a long hot day of work.

[Foxhunter223]

Another great story from Silverfox, really like the way you write and your photography skills are exceptional.
Thanks a heap.
Pete

[kenbro]

Wonderful story telling, as usual Silverfox. Thanks for sharing.
Do you not worry about leaving your truck untended in places like that?
Ken.

[borkon]

very nice Leroy. you're a blessed man for sure.

[Silverfox]

Thanks go to all you fellows for the nice comments on my report. Living where I do, with the hunting access I have, is truly a blessing and I don't ever forget that.

gerogeld--the temperature had cooled waaaaaay down into the 80s, but the relative humidity was still up above 80% so it was still very sticky out.

kenbro--there's always a chance someone could mess with your vehicle no matter where you park it unattended. Most of the places I go to hunt prairie dogs and to call coyotes put my pickup in a spot where I cannot see it and while I am concerned, if I want to hunt I have to be willing to leave the pickup all by its lonesome. The land I was on this day is a private ranch and it is posted with NO TRESPASSING signs and most folks around here usually obey those signs. However, if someone is looking to commit mischief those NO TRESPASSING signs probably wouldn't deter them from entering the land.