JC,
The first day was shooting the gophers mentioned above the rancher pulled up in his tractor and spent an hour eating lunch watching me; I think he had more fun watching me the then I did hunting them.
Charlie, The rancher is still a good friend and lets me hunt the gophers when ever I want. We have been through four poisoning cycles since that first hunt in 1991.
Shawn,
We have three distinct species here, the ground squirrel, prairie dog, and the marmot, We call these gophers, but I think they are actually ground squirrels. They are a lot smaller then a woodchuck. For reference, they are smaller then the tree squirrels I saw while hunting in Illinois last fall. We do have what is commonly call rock-chucks or marmots that are best hunted with broadheads, but they are a completely different critter. Hunting them is more like hunting spring bears then squirrels and they are tough to stop with an arrow before they make it to their holes. From what I have read they are a little bigger then the eastern woodchuck. The prairie dogs that reside in parts of Montana and Wyoming are those mentioned in many of the books written by trappers and settlers in the 1800’s and are about 25% the size of a rock-chuck and twice the size of a gopher.