Prairie dog gun

[edgerly779]

In this state we have ground squirrels. I loaded a bunch of copper 55 gr .223s for squirrels and jacks.

[Calif Hunter]

Yep - no prairie dogs in CA...

I have found that my CZ .17 HMR shoots the CCI Green ammo very well, as good as it shoots the 20 gr bullets, its former favorite. It works well for ground squirrels. I have not really tried to come up with a good centerfire lead-free small varmint load for any of my varmint rifles as I will just go out of state. I use Varmint Grenades or TSX in my .243 for coyotes. TSX handloads shoot good enough for called coyotes out of my Mini 14.

[JackEllis]

I'm a little late so maybe this will help the OP next year.

I won't use a .22lr in California because copper ammo shoots like crap but they're fine for shots under 100 yards.

Hornady 15.5 grain NTX ammo shoots quite well in my CZ 457 out to at least 100 yards. Should be able to take prairie dogs with no problem.

I've got a Tikka T3 Lite and a Howa 1500 with a varmint barrel, both in .223. Hornady 35 grain NTX handloads work well in both rifles. So do Hornady VMAX hand loads.

As others have pointed out, you'll need to bring more than one rifle because if the shooting is good, rifles will get hot in a hurry and you'll need one to shoot while the other one is cooling.

[theduracellbigd]

.223 40 grain vmax, and 17hmr vmax. Thats all you need 300 and in no problem. Unless your hunting in CA ...haha then the copper ammo idk