I'm sorry, but this is going to be a long one, and for good reason.
I've been varmint hunting since I was 12 years old, and I am now 76. I have always known that prairie dogs are both cannibalistic and murderers. But this is a bit off the subject of my rant as it were.
I don't remember the exact date (circa 2002), but I answered a comment on the Varmint Hunters web site. Soon thereafter, I got an email from a John Hoagland, a PhD with the Wild Earth Guardians. He was also at the time, a professor at the University of Michigan. I had mentioned in my email that prairie dogs were in fact cannibals and murderers, and the good doctor took offense to my comments.
At the time, he was studying an isolated dog town in eastern Utah. There were rocky hills on two sides, sort of in a V shape. The front of the south-facing gorge as it were, was hemmed in by a creek which flowed water most of the year. He attributed the cannibalistic behavior to the fact that the prairie dogs were a confined town, and made references to human behavior in similar circumstances. Well, that is just plain hogwash!
In the ensuing weeks and months, he and I had several dozen emails, and at least 4 or 5 long-winded telephone conversations. He even sent me an autographed copy of one of his books on the subject. Anyone can do a Google search on his name or Wild Earth Guardians, and come up with all sorts of publications with his name listed. And, you'll find out he is now campaigning (apparently with help from PETA_yech!) about the Denver area cities attempting to eradicate the destructive prairie dogs from the front range communities. I won't call the professor misguided, but he just doesn't get the picture.
In the book he sent me, he openly stated that the ring tailed, and white tailed, prairie dogs were in danger, and needed fed protection. I don't remember the exact number he stated, but it was under 100,000 for the whole country(!), which once had a population of over 10,000,000! This too is hogwash. I explained to the professor that I could take him to a dog town in Wyoming, just a scant 125 miles from my home. Which, according to the Wyoming department of Fish & Game, contained over one million prairie dogs. Further north, near Bismarck, ND, was a dog town with a population of over 50 million! He categorically stated, if I remember his words, "That is impossible!" Well, sports fans, it is not!
I will go on record at this point with a few truisms—believe them or not!
You can poison out a prairie dog town if you really try. Nature can plague out a prairie dog town too. But.... Try as you or Mother Nature may, a few mating pairs will still survive. And they turn out at least one litter a year (all the professor says they do). Here in southeast New Mexico, it is not uncommon for them to have two litters per year. And guess what? Subsequent litters become immune to the plague, and to the poison used to eradicate them. This fact only leaves the task up to us varmint hunters.
My advice? Eradicate as many as you can.
