Poisoned Prairie dog Towns: How To Tell

After being a long range an extreme long range shooter for over 47 years I have studied Prairie dogs. While others we going to town getting into trouble, I was out on "dog towns" watching and studying them.

When you study what your trying to hunt, you are simply a lot more successful. I learned that prairie dogs are always looking for danger, they are looking for what's going on in their colony or town that might be dangerous to them. When they see something that's a detriment to them; hawks, owls, or a driving vehicle, they wag that tail and to the safety of the mound they go. They never quit being aware.

Now my granddad always told me common sense will prevail. I am certain when he said that, he simply wasn't thinking about the American farmer or rancher that thought poison was the answer to their problems with the dogs. It never ceased to amaze me how could someone put out Poison on their place (Farm Or Ranch) and after that not take a pair of Binoculars and start being aware of what they were doing?

In order how to tell a dog town has for fact been poisoned you first have to understand that it needs to be decent weather for the majority of the dogs to be up. It needs to be dry, low humidity(less than 25%) and 68~70 plus weather and very little wind to have great numbers of dogs up. Now don't get me wrong, I have seen prairie dogs up when their was more humidity, but I am talking about better conditions.

A poisoned dog town only gets 80% of the dogs, so does the plague. Common sense says NOTHING is 100%. If the plague killed every dog in every town we wouldn't have ANY DOGS AT ALL! 80% is figured only if holes are flagged and the land owner does a great job of putting it out. Ask yourself, how can you possible have enough man power to flag every hole? You can't. How can you be certain every dog will get a dose? You can't. How can you succesful poison a dog town if you don't flag every mound? You can't.

Now looking at the dog town and determining

You very quietly ease into the edge of the dog town where you can see all over with a STABLE pair of Binoculars. Fellows I said stable, like my personal binocular rest below this article.This binocular rest holds the binoculars VERY stable, so no movement is detected. It swivels 180 degrees also.

Again do this when it is a beautiful day without any wind. We want the best chance we can to observe. Now look closely for any dogs, you will get a strong sense after being there at least an hour, because a poisoned dog town resembles a total ghost town. If your lucky and see any dog, it will more than likely be a peeking out of a hole, no running and playing. In fact its very hard to get to see any dogs, because a poisoned dog town, the dogs stay down at any sight of man. Believe me, there are dogs there and roughly 5 years is about what it takes a town to get back to where dogs are active.

When a dog sees other dog laying dead after a shoot, that is one thing, but rest assured when they go to a lot of holes and smell dead dogs all over, then most of the time they leave. They go over on the nearby neighbor or down the road to get away from the danger. They are just exactly like coyotes, the harder you kill them, the harder they come back!!

Article by: Larry Gene Pate, Texas Prairie Dog Safaris

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Read more or to book a hunt with Larry:
http://www.ultimateprairiedoghunting.com/business/texas-prairie-dog-safaris/

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