Friday, July 04, 2008
Prarie pest control
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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On the rolling landscape of North Dakota, hunters turn their focus to prairie dogs in the summer
BOWMAN, N.D. -- Lying prone in a dusty prairie field, Tom Fossum squinted through the high-powered scope mounted atop his rifle.
Friend Cole Egeland offered guidance.
"There's one," said Egeland, peering through his binoculars. "Right on top of that mound straight out."
Fossum steadied himself and pulled the trigger.
"Nice shot," Egeland said.
Here on the rolling prairies of southwest North Dakota, hunters spend their autumns pursuing majestic mule deer and speedy pronghorn antelope.
But during the summer, some focus on a less glamorous quarry -- prairie dogs.
Left unchecked, the squirrel-sized burrowing rodents can wreak habitat havoc. But shooting prairie dogs isn't only a form of pest control. It can provide field experience for hunters seeking to stay sharp in the offseason.
"And it's fun," Egeland said.
As a shot rang out every couple of minutes, Egelend's father, Craig, surveyed the landscape from atop a small knoll.
This prairie dog town covered at least 50 acres, and for nearly as far as the naked eye could see, the ground resembled a moonscape, pock-marked with holes and mounds, the grass shorn short.
"You can see what the hell they do to your grass," said the elder Egeland, a full-time cattle rancher for whom losing grazing land to dog towns is a constant frustration. "Sometimes, you want to kill them all."
But ranchers such as Egeland, who on this day was hosting a group of shooting writers field-testing a variety of Ruger varmint rifles, know that total eradication is not only not feasible, it's not reasonable.
Poison, which sometimes is distributed though tainted oats and barley, can be an effective tactic for wiping out a dog town. But it's not a preferred approach -- not only because totally eliminating prairie dogs isn't ecologically sound, but because other birds and animals can ingest the poison.
Destructive as they can be, prairie dogs play an important role in the prairie ecosystem.
For one thing, they are the preferred food source for the imperiled black-footed ferret. The towns also provide habitat for pronghorns.
"You see a lot of antelope in a dog town," Cole Egeland said. "They like that short grass."
So that leaves landowners seeking to simply control the numbers, an effort effectively accomplished by shooting.
Like other forms of varmint shooting, prairie dog hunting doesn't sit well with everyone. While prairie dogs are edible -- just like rats, mice and groundhogs -- few end up on the table.
Prairie dog hunting is a long-standing tradition across the rodents' range.
"I've hunted prairie dogs my entire life," said Phil Johnston, who is in his 60s and lives in northeast North Dakota. "It's kind of like fishing.
"Shooting prairie dogs is just something you did growing up in North Dakota."
Prairie dog shooting has evolved as more sportsmen become interested in varmint hunting. These days, ranchers often have little trouble finding people to help them keep prairie dogs in check.
Craig Egeland, who has a modest guest lodge on his ranch, is thinking about offering commercial prairie dog hunts.
"The lodge is mostly just for friends during the fall, but we probably ought to do some prairie dog stuff," he said. "There's getting to be a lot of interest."
Some ranchers are already charging daily access fees to hunters.
Roanoker Joe Davis just returned from his annual prairie dog trip to Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota. Davis said it's not unusual to pay a "trespass fee" of $50 a day or so to gain access to private land, and to get a rancher's help in locating prairie dog towns.
In some cases, local visitors bureaus and fish and game offices maintain lists of landowners who allow hunting.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department produces a map of prairie dog distribution on its Internet site (gf.nd.gov/hunting) and also provides contact numbers for offices that can provide details on locating hunting areas.
Prairie dog shooting can be a fairly specialized endeavor.
Serious shooters usually start by taking up an elevated station on the outskirts of a town, focusing first on the closer animals and then moving out to more distant targets.
Most prefer small-caliber centerfire rifles chambered for fast, flat-shooting rounds such as .223 Remington, 22-250 Remington and .204 Ruger.
Shots beyond 300 yards are not uncommon.
"I think my best was a little over 400 yards," Fossum said.
Serious shooters often work in tandem, with one man spotting and the other shooting. The spotter often uses a laser rangefinder to get exact distances to the targets.
Hunts are not exercises in rapid fire, but rather in slow, deliberate, long-range marksmanship.
Still, the pace is faster than during other kinds of hunting, and that's part of what keeps hunters coming back to the prairie.
"It's going hunting and getting to shoot hundreds of rounds," Davis said, "instead of just one."
