We got home last night from SD, we had a great time. We even left a few dogs for the rest of you. We ended up staying at the motel it was nice and the people there were great. We told them we would be back. I think some of the people would let you stay/camp on the range units but I am not sure that you would want to. There wouldn't be anyone around to watch your stuff and it seemed that there were shooters there that would have loved to shoot a tent up if they had the chance IMO. We were glad to have the motel to go to when we were done shooting for the day.
We got there Friday morning after driving all night. After finding the Department of Fish, Game & Parks building we got our permits and they told us they had a lessee who had called and wanted some shooters to come out and shoot some p-dogs. His unit was marked "Do Not Hunt" on the phone list. We tried calling him when we had cell reception which wasn't often, the phone would ring twice, pick up and then disconnect. So by stopping and asking people we were finally able to find his house. After much knocking on the door he answered, I had woke him up (11:30am). He told us he was glad that we wanted to shoot and told us how to get to his unit.
About 12:15 we were on the unit and saw a couple of other vehicles driving around and window shooting. Finally one of the other guys came over and started feeding me a bunch of BS about they were shooting military assault rifles that would go 400 to 600 yards and we needed to be careful where we were. I told him how we had permission to be there, he avoided saying they had talked to the unit lessee. He said that they had talked with the conservation boys at their motel and they had permission to shoot on 36,000 acres. Fortunately they were only going to be there another hour or two and they were headed home. We got about 6 hours of good shooting in. Nice weather in the 90s and about 5 to 10mph winds. For being our first day and first time out, we thought we did really well.
We would have returned to the same place on Saturday, but it was a very long drive from the motel. So we located another unit closer to the motel and had a good day. We only saw one other vehicle on the unit and they only drove by window shooting once. (Is window shooting a common practice? The reservation information rules say to get out of your vehicle and walk, that is what hunting is about.) We set up our benches and sunshade and shot away. We found a good spot where we had dogs about 270° around us. Dogs were from 75 to 450+ yards. We would shoot one direction for a while and then shoot in a different direction. The winds started at about 10 to 15mph and by noon it was 15 to 20mph with gusts up to 25mph. One of the guys had bought a wind meter and he was having a blast playing with it. We suspect that there were a few gusts stronger than 25 mph because the wind buckled one of the legs of the sun screen and then more metal tubes bent as it was trying to take flight. So in the afternoon we sat in the sun with plenty of sun block, the motel guy said his thermometer read 104° for the day. The wind and 250 to 350 yard shots made it more interesting but we were connecting with dogs and had a blast. We even had a couple of doubles and a lot of flippers. We got 12 hours of shooting in.
We also saw deer, antelope, turkey, a couple of burrowing owls and a big vulture. We didn't see any snakes.
We will be headed back again.
