Every summer I try to go on two prairie dog hunts. This year, the first hunt was to be a guided hunt in the panhandle of OK for the third week of May. Unfortunately, just two weeks before the hunt I found out the guide had been hospitalized for 60 days and was still quite ill and week. Since he couldn’t guide the hunt he put me in contact w/ a landowner he'd hunted w/.The landowner repeatedly said, “Just come on.” I was worried about the weather as thunderstorms and high winds were predicted for the area and there'd already been a lot of recent bad weather in OK. Our party of five included my son, my brother in law and a father/son duo; the father had been on one pd hunt 20 years ago, but it was his son's first hunt.

The drive from NW LA went well. En route, we picked up my son at the Oklahoma City airport; he’d flown in from Lafayette, LA to Oklahoma City, OK to save him a lot of driving time. We stopped at El Reno, OK to eat “onion burgers,” a local favorite. While eating my onion burger, a friend from work who’s a “storm chaser,” sent me a screen pic of the weather around the town we were travelling to. There were numerous thunderstorms in the area. As we neared our destination, we were detoured by the local Sheriff’s Dept because a tornado had just passed through, knocking down power lines and blocking the road.

The weather ended up being just fine despite dire predictions. Although both days were predicted to have a 70% chance of rain w/ “damaging thunderstorms” and wind gusts to 30 mph, both days were nice. The first day turned out sunny and dry w/ no wind in the AM and manageable wind in the PM. We were afraid our 2 WD trucks might have problems getting into the fields, but it was ok (although we did take a running start once and made a point of staying out of the ruts). We had a really good hunt the first day, shooting at the same spot all day until near dark. Shots were mainly 200-350 yards. At the end of the day we were alarmed to see a 3-4’ long prairie rattler near the trucks.

My main pd hunting guns are Remington XP-100 bolt action pistols in 22 BR and 6mm BR. Although I started out shooting the 22 BR, I quickly changed to my two “guest guns” so I could spot my own shots since I didn’t have a spotter. I can’t see the impact of the bullet w/ my handguns, but I can w/ the guest guns. Both guest guns started life as Stevens bolt action rifles in 270 Win, but I converted them to 221 Remington Fireball and 20 Practical (basically a 204 Ruger, but using 223 Remington brass). As it turns out, both guest guns were off so much that I ended up having to rezero them. After making adjustments to the scopes, I shot much better w/ the Practical. I’m not sure what happened to knock off both guns, but they were carried in the same gun case.

Our party used a number of rifles, including a Savage bolt action in 204 Ruger, a Remington M700 in 223 Remington, a Remington M788 in 243 Winchester, an AR 15 in 223 and bolt action rifles in 17 HMR and 22 Magnum.

The first stop day #2 was at a dog town beside a dirt county road. The shooting was much slower since the town had been shot fairly heavily. Since the shooting was slow, we decided to move to a second town the landowner told us about. The new town was really good. The dogs were plentiful and acted as if they’d not been shot. Ranges were fairly close with most shots 150-200 yards, but many were less than 100 yards. Since there was a moderate crosswind and my son was spotting for me, I used the 6mm BR and it’s heavier bullets. The 6 BR made a good showing for itself. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to explore the other half of the dog town as we were chased in a few hours early by a big thunderstorm. Although the thunderstorm had heavy rain and high winds, there were no tornados. Unfortunately, a tornado did hit El Reno, OK that evening, (the town we’d eaten at 48 hours earlier) killing 2 and injuring 30.

All in all, it was a really good hunt. Although the weather had me worried, it ended up being fine. It was unfortunate our guide got ill, but it enabled me to establish a contact for future private land hunts. I hope to have more hunts w/ the landowner or his friends. In fact, I’m hoping I can make a second OK hunt later this summer.

We saw a lot of sheet metal in the fields from the storm the prior night.

Relaxing while shooting dogs.

XP-100 in 6 BR

A size 11 pd. That’s a big dog.

This post was edited on 6/12/19 at 5:15 pm