Prairie Dogs and Chiggers

No farm visit this weekend because I made a quick run to South Dakota to hunt prairie dogs with my friends Jim, Wally and Larry. It was an 18 hour drive out, 3 days of shooting, and an 18 hour drive back.  At least we broke the drives up with a night in Des Moines IA (each way).

Prairie dog hunting is a lot like shooting rats at the dump.  They are rodent like creatures that burrow out in the prairie.  Most farmers poison them to eradicate them because they ruin their fields and their burrows can cause broken legs on cattle and horses.  Recreational shooters hunt them because they provide live small targets at long range that pop up randomly. And there are hundreds or thousands of them in a single prairie dog town.  We hunted on the Redbud Sioux Reservation.

Jim and I left Tuesday evening, drove to the Des Moines area and spent the night.  On Wednesday we drove the rest of the way to Wood, SD and met up with Wally and Larry.  They had been visiting some old friends in Wyoming.

Wood is a small town in the middle of nowhere. We had a rental house and did most of the cooking ourselves.  We did visit the two commercial establishments in town - the gas station/breakfast restaurant and the local bar. It was a little scary when we arrived because the air conditioning wasn't working at the rental house (101 degrees).  Luckily, the landlord got it fixed right away.

This is my setup for dog-hunting - shooting bench, 223 rifle with scope, spotting scope, rangefinder, and ammo.  We just set up out in the middle of the prairie and spent all day shooting rodents anywhere from 100 to 500 yards.

I was prepared for the weather with a big sun hat and long sleeves.  It was 100 degrees and out in the sun all day long with no shade in sight. Usually there was a decent breeze.

Here's Wally and Larry spotting dogs.

Jim with his original setup - he made some changes for the next two days.

 What I wasn't prepared for was chiggers.  They are the larvae stage of a mite.  Unbeknownst to me, these invisible little critters were crawling up my boots, over my socks, up my legs, to my crotch where they feasted on my tender flesh.  All four of us had chigger bites but mine were the worst.  I had one sleepless itchy night but then we found some cortisone cream and benedryl.  It did the trick.

We also got smarter and duct taped our pant legs to our boots - that seemed to help alot.  We had used insect spray and that didn't seem to have much effect at all.

This is Jim's improved set up - he used the truck bed for a little more elevation.

You have to be a little goofy to drive 18 hours to shoot rodents for 3 days - especially while being gorged on by chiggers and staying in a rental house in a town with a population of 73.  But it's kind of fun and it's great practice to shoot hundreds of shots at long range.  Remind me how goofy it is when I'm considering doing it again next year...