Can anyone tell me where I can hunt prairie dogs within a reasonable drive from Colorado Springs
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Can anyone tell me where I can hunt prairie dogs within a reasonable drive from Colorado Springs
I spent over an hour driving around my land looking for a colony. Nothing. :(
another thread somewhere on here about this topic. Go east. Get off the highway at small towns, go further down dirt roads and start asking politely at some farms. Might get lucky. Tough thing to do, the land owners are very picky about who shoots what on their land. "Don't hit the cows" will be a typical response.
This is very true! Many careless shooters have made it very difficult for land owners to trust people they don't know to come shoot at their land. I have heard many stories of people damaging pipes, farm equipment and even hitting livestock with ricochets.
Also, many shooters go to a PD town and exterminate 100% of the dogs. These folks don't understand that hunting is about conservation and not about eradication.
For these and many other reasons, you (the OP) will have a very hard time getting other shooters to share their contacts to PD towns.
Any options on public lands?
Killing 100% of them is what many land owners want, as prairie dogs destroy usable land for crops and endanger animals with the holes.
I've been trying to get property near the Springs to P-Dog hunt for years with no success.
I thought I had an "in" to some property off of Curtis Road & Hwy 94 but I haven't heard from this guy since early August.
Yes, many landowners do want total eradication due to disease and crop and herd damage, but not all. Some landowners aren't concerned with these issues and want to be able to keep coming back P-Dog hunting year after year. The problem with total eradication is that it can take several years to get another colony moved into your property to hunt them.
There already trying to get them listed as endangered...
*Dont clean out a pasture*
Its called management
If I had prairie dogs on my land I'd want to keep them around too, but that is only because there aren't any crops there and only a few cows.
Maybe I am crazy...
when I hunt someone's property I make sure to watch for the little things like Structures, Machinery, Livestock, Neighbors, Playgrounds, children, pets... shit like that which could disturb future visitations.
and as far as a total eradication of a Prairie-RAT town.. its unlikey as I just aint that damned good.
There's a name for it...
Common sense Maybe?
;)
Total eradication by shooting is not possible. There are studies out there that indicate that shooting will not bring the total PD population much below 37% of the original population.
Noise, shooting, traffic will all contribute to the balance of the population staying down. Therefore, any more impact by shooting does not happen.
It order to even be effective at controlling the population you need to kill at least 70% of them at one time. Otherwise it actually stimulates more reproduction and the town get bigger.
There is public land but expect to take very long shots and the PDs there get shot at a lot and go down the hole as soon as the first shot rings out if not sooner.
I am lucky I currently have three places to shoot and working on a fourth. Most people covet the private land they have permission on.