After waiting 7 months, prairie dog hunting season opened for me a few weekends ago. Although there’s no actual season, I normally make my first pd hunt in mid-May to the panhandle of OK.I had a new gun this year, a specialty handgun in 17 Remington Fireball (RFB), to go with my usual battery of bolt action handguns: a 20 VarTarg, 223 Remington Ackley Improved and a 22 Nosler. All four guns wear a suppressor.

I left Tuesday after work, arriving at the motel at 3:30 AM. I spent day #1 scouting all the pd towns we usually hunt since the rest of my party (I call them the “Young Guns” since all 3 are in their late 20’s) wouldn’t arrive until late Wednesday. They spend the drive through OK looking for good buys at gun stores and pawn shops. Before going to the dog towns, I visited the local feed store and a new gun shop, trying to find some new dog towns. All the good pd towns looked promising. I didn’t really set up for a shoot at any of the towns, but I still shot a good bit. Since the wind was fairly quiet, I mainly shot the 17 RFB and the 20 VarTarg. I like to shoot the lightweight bullets when the wind’s calm, moving to the heavier bullets as the wind picks up. Thursday, Friday and Saturday found us busy shooting…a LOT. Typically, I’ll shoot about #100 rounds/day, but on this hunt I averaged 181 rounds/day. This was the busiest hunt I’ve been on. I shot entirely on the hood of my truck or off the rotating table in the bed of my truck. The “Young Guns” were kind enough to haul my 10’ trailer with 3 rotating tables. They split their time shooting off the tables or walking through the pastures with 17 HMR’s, 22 LR’s or 22 Magnum.

I was very pleased with my equipment. The 17 RFB took a knee Friday when I ran out of the 200 rounds I had loaded for it. During the hunt one of the guys let me borrow his Garmin chronograph. I was surprised to see both l17 Remington RFB loads were traveling at 3820 fps. I was hoping to get 3700 fps. I’m going to drop the powder charge a little so pressures aren’t excessive in hotter weather. In the RFB, the 20 grain bullet was much more destructive than one would think. I couldn’t tell a performance difference between the VMax and the Varmageddon. I shot the VarTarg on Thursday and Friday, but it didn’t get much action on Saturday as the wind had picked up, gusting to 40 mph, but usually manageable. There was no rain and it was sunny and warm, except for Saturday when the day started chilly and overcast. Dogs didn’t move much Saturday until late morning when the clouds burned off and the sun came out. Playing the wind is really tricky and is helped greatly by having a spotter. Saturday afternoon I was self-spotting and lucked out on figuring out the wind. When shooting in a partial cross wind at a large colony of 12 dogs, I found that if I put the horizontal crosshair on the pd’s back and bracketed his nose and butt between the first and second horizontal ballistic dashes, I had a high hit rate. Due to the high winds Saturday, I shot the 22 Nosler 223 Rem AI.

All told, it was a really fun hunt. We saw a lot of dogs and more than the usual amount of young dogs. I even managed to shoot a couple doubles. The adult dogs were very plump. The pastures were green, but the grass wasn’t too high. The “Young Guns” saw a number of prairie rattlers as they walked the pastures, but none of the rattlers came too close. They ran low on ammo the last day and borrowed some 17HMR ammo and my “guest guns”, rifles in 20 Practical and 221 Remington Fireball. I got the 221 Fireball muzzle threaded a few months ago so this was its first hunt with a suppressor. Using the Otter Creek Lab 5.56 Polonium it didn’t sound much louder than a 22 LR. They shot >4300 rounds of their ammo, plus >200 rounds from each of the guest guns. For the entire hunt, I shot over 700 rounds, a personal best for me. The 223 Rem AI was the busiest, accounted for a little more than 1/3 of the rounds I shot.

As far as bullets, soft point bullets (Speer SP, Hornady SX and Hornady SP) just aren’t as destructive as the Speer TNT and the plastic tip bullets. In addition, the soft point bullets lack the satisfying “plop” of a solid hit with a plastic tip or HP bullett. In the 17 RFB I shot 20 gr Varmageddon and VMax bullets and was pleased with both. I hope to try Midway and Nosler HP’s in the future. The 20 VarTag shot 32 gr Nosler Ballistic Tips. In the 223 AI used all 50 gr bullets: Speer TNT, Nosler Ballistic Tip and VMax. The 22 Nosler shot all 55 gr bullets: Hornady SX, Hornady SP, Varmageddon plastic tip and VMax. I’ve shot a number of different bullets in the 223 AI and 22 Nosler and I’m about to settle on Nosler Ballistic Tips, Hornady VMaxes and Speer TNT bullets for future use.

I'm looking forward to another hunt in late June, but I'll need to load some more ammo first.

17 RFB and its first kills.

The “Young Guns” shooting

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223 Remington Ackley