Gophers Galore

[Allen in MT]

A friend and I decided to make a run for a ground squirrel shoot. Headed to a spot which is about 2hr 15 minute drive. We left at 7am and when we got there we had to find a station that sold gopher permits, Yes I said Gopher permit. Have to have one where we went.

Following the ownership map on the Garmin we found a big open expanse that looked and reminded me of some prairie dog towns.

Gophers up the ying yang as the little ones were out also. I had never on any videos or in person seen this many gophers in one area. We were both shooting 22's for the most part and I had a 17 HMR and Tom had a 204 as extra rifles. They were popping up so close to the car that they were just a big blur in the scopes. My best string without a miss was 14, we had multiple doubles and Tom got a triple. I would say I was shooting 8 to 10 gophers or more every 15 minutes or less.

Shot nearly a brick of 22's plus about 60 17 HMR's. The shooting was utterly fantastic. Thought we got about 500 between us. We had a video camera with us but nobody to run it as we were to busy shooting. But did manage to get a couple of stills.

We had to leave at 3pm as we had to be home by six.
Chomping at the bit to go back.

[Mike Furness]

That's one hell of a prairie dog community to be hitting 500 and still have some left! Never seen one quite that big ... maybe a couple hundred when back in CO in the 70's. Good shooting!

[azdigger]

Wow, when I lived in South Dakota there was a man the had about 3000 acres and he told me I could hunt anything in season if durung thee off season I would shoot some prairie dogs.

There was about 150 acres in "dog" fields....had lots of fun in the off seasons.....miss that.