This was my first visit to South Dakota for prairie dogs. I wanted to shoot on large towns and also a chance to shoot some long shots. Two of my objectives on this hunt was to join the VHA 500 and 1000 clubs, both of which I managed to achieve. The hunt was in mid december and the rodents were mostly pretty shy, but we did get a lot of long range shooting, so we were pretty happy with that.

This rodent was shot at 380 yards with the .223. This may not be ultra long range, but the wind flag on the barrel gives some indication of the wind conditions for the afternoon's shooting. I managed to take dogs out to 575 yards with the .223

Our guide Gene DeLong with my friend Mark White who is using my 6-284 for a 1000 yard shot. My Wife looks on in the background wondering what drives grown men to this lunacy.

Mark trying for a long shot on a dog. His girlfriend Karen looks on wondering what drives grown men to this lunacy.
 
 

Mark with his VHA 500 yard club shot. The rifle is a Sako .223 with a custom barrel. Mark is a gunsmith and rebarreld and tuned the trigger himself. Scope is a Leupold 6.5-20.
 
 

After obediently posing for this photo, this dog happily waited for me to set up my bench and dispatch it with my .223

Rodents everywhere.
 

My 1012 yard shot. At first I thought I had missed the dog because we saw a puff of dust just over it. I watched the dog through the scope for a while longer and it never moved. We went down to check and found the bullet had traveled the full length of the dog, dropping it without a twitch and raising a puff of dust when it exited from the shoulder. I used 105gn Lapua bullets and found they provided some expansion on the two dogs hit just beyond 1000 wards.

This is the view from my shooting position out to the 1012 yard Prairie dog. The dot marks where the prarie dog was sitting.

While we were ranging the long shot for the VHA 1000 Club, we came across this badger. This was the first time I've seen one of these carnivores.