2018 Trip #8, Central Wyoming, 22 – 23 July, with Ash and myself.

2018 Trip #8

2018 Trip #8 a two day trip this time, weather didn’t look good, and it wasn’t.

We started this trip off again in Lance Creek, Wyoming on Oil Land Property.  Last week when the weather was good we shot over 400 dogs in just a few hours, not this trip.

We did make it to Lance Creek before it started raining, that’s it.  About a half of an hour later it started raining.  It would rain for awhile, stop.  Rain for a while, stop.  Not storms, just study rain and some wind.  We almost packed up and headed South, but the prairie dogs just kept coming up.  They weren’t as heavy as the week before, but they kept coming up.  I used my 223 AI Rem 700 all day.  Some shooters will not believe this but I thank the rain effects the bullets in their travel.  I was going to start off with my 221 FireBall with the lighter bullets but with the rain and wind I started with the Rem 700 223 AI and the Hornady 55 grain Soft Point.  I like the Hornady 55 grain Soft Point, it’s readily available almost anywhere, it’s inexpensive, and it shoots well in all of my 223 Rem, AI’s, and AR’s.

We managed to shoot a little over 200 dogs in about four hours, not that bad.  We had plans to head South to Wheatland, Wyoming and stay the night and shoot South of there the next day.  Plans do have to be changed at times, this was one of them.  We got up to study hard rain.  After breakfast the rain was still coming down.  We called our rancher to check the weather at the ranch; it was raining. 

We decided to head North to do some scouting around Fort Laramie.  The rain had stopped before we got in contact with a rancher near-by.  He came to town and we followed him out to his prairie dog town.  It had been shot before and the dags didn’t like people with rifles driving around in their home, they didn’t come back up at all.  In about an hour of driving we only shot TWO dogs, headed back to Wheatland to our original ranch.

We didn’t get to the Wheatland ranch until noon, not a lot of time left before we needed to head for home.  The wife called and said “there’s several storms between the Wyoming line and home.”  We managed to shoot a little over a 100 more dogs before we left at around 4:00.  It didn’t rain anymore in Wyoming but the sky was overcast keeping the dogs down, they don’t like cloudy weather.

I shot my 221 FireBall all the second day and shot about 50 more dogs, my total was 189 for this trip.  Not great but we did get out for a couple days.