1. Where's "here?"
SE Idaho. We're about 25 miles south of Pocatello. Our friend's ranch (where we do most of our ground squirrel and mule deer hunting these days is 10-12 miles west of us, in the next valley over.
2. At least "here" in Colorado, even resting a loaded gun on a vehicle without touching it would get you cited by a Game Warden.
We've never had a problem with
any kind of law enforcement (and that includes the county sheriff's department) when we've been out shooting and using our truck for a rest. Besides, as I've mentioned before, my wife has an Idaho Disabled Hunter Permit (atrial fibrillation) anyway. That permit (which is hanging from the rearview mirror in our truck) even allows my wife to legally shoot
from a motor vehicle as long as it's not moving or on a public road. And when we're driving around "hunting" (mule deer or ground squirrels) on our friend's ranch, we're often nowhere near a public road.
I also don't know what they call them nowadays but it's something high-falutin' and "collegey."
LOL!
I think they're still called "game wardens" here. Although, I
have heard them called a few derogatory terms that I won't mention here because this
is THR.
3. Are your"ground squirrels" prairie dogs? There's quite a variability in critter names. I picked up the term "prairie rats" from one of the farmers for whose ground I thinned them out.
No way to completely eradicate them except chemically or by housing development.
They're ground squirrels - a type of "Belding" ground squirrels, I believe. I wouldn't recognize their
scientific name if I heard it.
We also have rock chucks (yellow-bellied marmots), badgers, gophers and ground-dwelling chipmunks here. No prairie dogs though.
Some folks in this part of the country call rock chucks "whistle pigs" because they
do whistle. So do ground squirrels though, and when the shooting slows down, my wife and I often call ground squirrels up out of their holes by emitting a few short, high-pitched whistles.
We don't shoot the rock chucks on our own place, or when they're out in the lava rocks and not hurting anything. Besides, unlike the thousands of ground squirrels on our friend's ranch every spring, we seldom see a rock chuck there.
Our friends won't poison the ground squirrels out either. They're afraid that birds of prey (eagles, hawks, owls and vultures) in the area would eat the poisoned ground squirrels.
Consequently, my wife and I usually have our work cut out for us in the spring. We drive over to our friend's ranch 2 or 3 days a week and shoot ground squirrels for 2 or 3 hours straight. It wasn't all that great last spring because the weather didn't cooperate and there was still about 3 feet of snow in places. A few ground squirrels had tunneled their ways up through the snow here and there, but not many. And we could only get to the ones near our rancher friend's haystacks (where the roads were plowed to) anyway.
What do you use for shooting prairie dogs? Like I said, we don't have prairie dogs around here, but I've often thought my .22-250 would work well for them - until I shot the barrel out, I guess.
We just use .22LRs for ground squirrels. We never shoot more than about 80 yards anyway. The first time our rancher friends asked us to come over and shoot ground squirrels I took my .22-250 along for the "distant" ones. And when I actually
did spot a ground squirrel out there at about 125 yards, I got my .22-250 out of the back seat, leaned it across the hood, and disintegrated the little varmint. However, as soon as I pulled the trigger, I thought, "Gee, that was stupid - all of that noise and fuss to shoot one ground squirrel when there are hundreds of them running around within 50 yards of us!"
I'm not going to sell my .22-250 though. It's still a great coyote rifle.