Anyone shoot around WINNER ?

I've taken a couple of trips out to the Pine Ridge Res, once in 05 and again in 06.  Both times the tribal folk I met were great.  The land owner was very gracious.  I think I paid about $100 to the tribe for a season license and then $25 / day to the land owner.

The 05 season was really great.  I was there in late April.  The weather was gorgeous and the shooting good.  In 06 there had been a plague of some sort sweep through the population, so the shooting wasn't nearly as good.  Does anyone know if the population has recovered since then?  I've not been back since.

Leaving tomorrow.......winner

How was Winner? I'm heading out next weekend. We stay in Winner and head NW a ways to shoot.

Is Varmint Hunter's Assoc Worth joining? Here is this month's issue on prairie dog hunting available digitally.  http://www.varminthunter.org/VarmintHunter.html

Also came across this reference. http://www.prairiedoghunting.org/

Maybe these will help, I prairie dog hunt a lot and would be glad to help.  

interesting.. no further info about what permit to apply for where to get forms and what not?

good to see someone finally got an answer. ive gotten the run around for over a year and finally gave up.

Yes.......according too the SDGF&P ppl...........it is legal.  This came from my local game warden via phonecon.

I called them up last year, since I was coming over from UT, and the warden had to call up some other people, but said that as long as you have the proper papers that it was legal to hunt anything (since I also wanted to know about the deer hunt on the family property) with a suppressor.  FYI there are some good areas out by buffalo gap, if you can find the BLM land out there.  Always enjoy a good trip out to SD, would sure like to move (or retire) there some day.

I live right on the Missouri River from April through October.  I have no shortages of great places too shoot pasture poodles. This summer I've arranged too shoot a buffalo. I am going too use my Thompson Center Contender in 45/70. This is the same handgun that I took my moose with in Maine. 400 grs of thump hurts.

im up here in northwestern ND and theres some pretty fair prairie dog shooting around the little missouri national grasslands, but you would have to find someone else to give you more information on good spots. i usually just drive around on trails until i find a good spot, but the far back spots that no one shoots usually produce hundreds of dogs on a nice sunny day. and i am 99% sure that in ND you can shoot out of the window, which eliminates the need for a bench. i do realize that you wanted to hunt in SD, so this info is up for grabs for anyone. I have also heard that down by bowman in the SW part of the state there are oodles of prairie dogs. hope some one else can chip in and be of more info than me.

I am looking to put together a hunt this May and am getting a few too many results to my searches. So far all I can find are package guide services who are charging around $300/person/day plus licenses which I think is a bit steep. Here is my situation: I am putting this together for myself, my dad, and brother because we have always talked about going but the timing has never worked out. This year my dad retires in March, and I will be graduating college and getting married in June, so we are looking at the middle of May this hunt to get away and have a little man-celebration time.

Anyway, I am not positive but I am pretty sure we will be flying in (18-20 hour drive is a little excessive) and will most likely rent a car. From there I am thinking that all we will need is lodging and a good guide. I have tried the links posted in this thread but they are no good and the rest of the info has some age on it so I am just looking for referrals on where to look and who to contact for a good experience at a reasonable rate. Thanks guys

Contact this guy, he's a member here.  http://www.ar15.com/member/member.html?id=65431

The reservation by Chamberlin is an awesome place!

I coulda told you that much before you left... :P



^ You mean to say "that treat white people like people."

The reservations around here are for natives. They don't like white people on their land. Stay off it.

I may even get pinned for being racist for saying that, but it's true! The natives in the Dakotas do NOT like white people on their land, no matter what you're doing!!

They aren't the red man wearing headdresses living in teepees, putting their ears to the ground and guiding palefaces to happy hunting grounds; They have their own militias even, and since the res is sovereign land, the FBI can't even go in and retrieve your dead body for a proper burial without permission from the Tribal Government.

Sorry if I sound racist, but it's true.

If anyone is looking around Standing Rock to do some hunting and needs info send me a IM. Being LEO here I work with the fish and game guys and might find if your guide is any good! I don't know all the fish and game laws around here but I might find them out for you.

Looking at Public Land Prarie Dog shooting around Rapid City, end of June timeframe.

Any insight or any members in the area?

Only .223/5.56mm I own is Full Auto, is it allowed, I would be shooting on Semi Auto but it's still classified as NFA so don't want to run a foul of the law. I do have a .308 Bolt Gun and loading up 125gr Nosler BT's at about 3000fps

Thanks for any insight and if any members are local and hook me up with the sweet spots they are more than welcome to shoot my toys, have 4 M16's, 2 HK g36's, 4 MP5's and a UMP45 I could bring.

10/22 suppressed for close range



.308 for the long range dogs

My plans for a dog shoot have been moved to late August. Looking for info still.

Ok I am finally locking in a date for a hunt. The guide that we are using only had a few days that weren't booked up in October. I thought this was a little late in the season but he says that there are still an abundance of targets. I am looking for input from the locals before I spend a couple thousand on a trip and end up shipping a bunch of ammo back home. Thanks guys

I too am looking to go p-dog hunting in 2012.

Couple days ago...

The folks at Browns Hunting Ranch oustide of Gettysburg, SD would like to invite any of you to come share an ENJOYABLE prairie dog hunt with us. Your enjoyment is paramont to us so you'll not only tell your friends about us, but you'll come back year after year to spend time with us again and again. For more information about our services just visit our website and leave your name and information on the contacts page and Jim will get right back too you with answers to any questions you may have.  My name is Lee and i'm a local prairie dog shooter myself.  These folks truely are in business for YOUR pleasure not only for prairie dog hunts but all kinds of fishing and hunting vacations. I know i sure enjoyed my stay there and will go back again.

www.brownshuntingranch.com/

Dont forget about the walk-in areas, most of my shooting yotes and prairie dogs takes place on these free to the public lands, keeps you away from the Texas size prices.

http://gfp.sd.gov/hunting/areas/

Heres a huge list of places that do PD hunts

http://www.ultimateprairiedoghunting.com/USA/South-Dakota/directory/

Wow............no prairie dog on the planet is worth the cost per day this guide charges. That price better include helicoptor fare from my front door to his.

Yep, that is quite a fee, with a 3 day minimum.  I would hope that there are some pristine/unhunted areas that you get for that price.  Well out of my price range, but obviously folks are willing to pay the price.

I get to those places and all it costs me is gas to get there.

It's a hunting package for ppl that want to enjoy the luxury of spending a few days of being pampered and coddled while enjoying themselves.  Lodgeing, food, and scenery plus privacy = $. It's obviously not for just anyone, but those that do use it really enjoy it.  I know i did.

I went to my favorite prairie dog spot today, and it was damn near empty. My buddy said he knew of another spot just down the road, so we went there, and it was crawling with dogs. We got it a LOT of shooting this afternoon. So at least up here the dogs are still here, it's just hard finding them. It seems most of it is due to shooting, and not so much from disease.

Its been a good year around here for them. Ive seen alot of them traveling between towns over the last month or so, mostly young ones. Im seeing new holes pop up places where there have never been dogs until now as well.

Spent four hours in Buffalo Gap SE of Wall (past the missile silo) and only got 2 dogs. There were a bunch out there, but they all vanished after the first one bit the dust. Four hours later they started coming back out and disappeared again after the next one went down. I gave up after that.

They like to do that around here too. We have a few spots that are within a few miles of eachother, so we will drive back and forth after they get spooked. The problem is there are so many people up here anymore (Williston) and they get shot much more than they did 3 or 5 years ago.

Sounds like its time to hang it up until April/May, wait for the pups.

Just got back from a trip to the White River area of SD.  I ended up shooting a town located NE of town and had a great time!  Fired 621 rounds in 2 afternoons on a town that had a lot of dogs.  They were spooky but still managed to get quite a few in the 1-200 yard range.  I typically move around in a town but stayed put both days.  It worked out well.

I was trying to keep tabs on my success and came up with an 80% (+/-) hit ratio.  That computes to one heck of a lot of dead dogs but I still didn’t put a dent in that population.  No wonder the ranchers hate those things.

That was one of the best and most relaxing trips that I’ve ever had out there.  Temp was in the low 80s the first day and low 70s the next.  The wind was an issue the first day (8-18 mph variable speed and direction) but I kept shots closer and into it so that helped a bunch.  There was little to no wind the second day so that made things a lot easier.  I shot solo on this trip so that meant less noise which helped the dogs relax a bit quicker as well.

I’ll take the September shoots over June any day.  Sure, there are less dogs but the temps are cooler and the prairie is dry which means less worry about tearing up a rancher’s land.

Good to hear! 3 of us are heading to the Winner area on Sept 28th, hoping for some luck.

I thought I would add my $0.02 worth here for those looking to shoot PD's in South Dakota

I have been shooting prairie dogs out in SD for the past 15 years and have shot on the reservations (rosebud and lower Brule) and on private land in the Winner area and some public land and I can tell you that in general, the most cost effective method is to hunt private land and the quality of the shooting is hit or miss depending on how much the prairie dogs have been shot at.

I hunted on the Rosebud before they required guides and the hunting was pretty decent but the maps of what was reservation land vs. private land are very poor and to be safe we bought both tribal and state permits and you had to really search hard to find dog towns that weren't shot apart.  Now that they require guides, I don't bother, I have heard too many stories of paying a lot of money and being brought to dog towns that had been shot up.

Hunting private land is harder to come by for folks out of state because you are limited to those folks who advertise and those folks tend to be over priced.  But there are a fair number of "mom and pop" operations that you hear of via word of mouth who will let you hunt for $50 per person per day but you are going to have a hard time finding them until you get there and start talking to folks at the hotels, bars, and resturaunts.  Also, not all of these private operations are great places to hunt, some had a large number of dogs that hadn't been shot up and other places put you on dog towns that after the first shot they disappear and don't come back...EVER.  I had one experience where I paid to hunt and the first morning a crew of 5 guys were packing up and heading home while we were packing up to head to the dog town and they were all chuckling telling us we would be lucky to see many dogs on the dog towns because they had just spent the previous 3 days pounding them.  Then to find out all 5 of these guys were LEO's, school trained marksman/snipers from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.  When we got to our assigned dog towns we were saw they weren't kidding.  As far as the eye could see there were dead prairie dogs everywhere.  We saw very few live ones and when we did they were running.  That trip sucked.

My advice to folks if they want a lot of shooting, is to go earlier in the summer as the dogs have been shot at less and try to get off the beaten path.  If you can see a road from the dog town, it is a good bet that it gets a lot of attention.  Since I have been shooting dogs I have been looking for the mythical virgin prairie dog town; one that has never been shot at or gets very little attention.  I finally found it after years of searching.  I found it in the middle of bumb-fuck-nowhere, 8 miles from the nearest road and 50 miles from the nearest town in a very isolated and rugged part of SD and I can say without a doubt it was the best shooting I have ever experienced in my entire life!  When we crested the hill over looking this dog town and scanned the ground, there were so many prairie dogs it looked like the ground was moving.  I knew instantly this was going to be great and this prairie dog town did not disappoint.  My buddy and I each went through ~800 rounds of ammo that day, the damn things stood there and just let us shoot them, they had no idea what was going on; clearly they had never been shot before.  We would have some of the dumber ones come out of their holes litterally 20 yards right in front of us.  We could not depress our guns enough to shoot them off of the bench; so we had to stand up and shoot them free hand.  This wasn't us spraying and praying, these were all quality shots ranging from 20 yards extending out as far as you wanted to shoot.  This very well could have been a once in a lifetime experiernce as I don't know that I will get access to this town again.  Sorry guys don't even bother asking where this is.  It took me years to find it and I'm not going to give up its location......EVER!

Moral of the story, invest more time in scouting around and it will eventaully pay dividends.

As with any hunt, there are good and bad trips. Talking with locals is spot on. My first trip out was to Rosebud with a guide to learn the ins and outs of prairie dogging. Ever since I've been on private land that I found out about from chatting up bartenders and hotel staff.

Got my fix today, gonna hit a couple new towns tomorrow...



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I just got an invite to tag along to a shoot in ND shortly.  What's the law as far as ammo goes?  Ive got some fmj in both 223 and 308.  Is that legal to use or must it be expanding/hunting rounds?

Not sure on the "laws" but I wouldn't use fmj's. They will pass right through the dogs, you'll spend your time wondering "did I get 'em"? Much more satisfiying with ballistic tips or at the minimum HP's. You'll get a nice "pop" with those.

Id rather use ballistic tips.  Just a big issue finding them.

Sioux Falls Scheels has a bunch of Hornady 60 gr vmax on the shelf right now.  I would've bought them if I didn't stock up on TAC and Win 231 instead.

I should have stated nothing local.  Sioux falls is a bit of a drive from Duluth.

Leave before breakfast and you can be there by lunch.

My father and brothers and I will be traveling to the Northwest South Dakota area to do a little P-Dog hunting May 16th-20th. We have permission to shoot on a large ranch in the area. We have not been to the ranch, so I was hoping for a little info from you ARFCOMers in the area.

Hows the shooting this time of year?
Any specific public areas (or private with permission) we should check out?


Also, since much of the land in that region is Indian land, I wanted to verify that a license was not required since we have permission to shoot on land that is leased to a non-indian. Thoughts?

Thanks!