I've never hunted prairie dogs before, and I tell ya, those things are like nature-made popup targets. It's simply hysterical how they pop up, duck down, pop up, disappear to reappear somewhere else several seconds later; there will be one, then two, then none, at ranges from 10 to 300 yards. They're small, too -- biggest we saw couldn't have stood more than about 10" high.
My bro has a Savage bolt-gun with a 6x Weaver on it in .17HMR -- I've never fired it before, and at one of the shooting holes we frequented before our jaunt, we had these 5" water-filled "Ensure" bottles set out at about 110m. From a sandbag on the hood I took 10 shots and hit the targets 10 times. One sweet rifle -- the thing doesn't know how to miss when used like that, and the reticle stays fixed on target the whole time. My boy got one about ever other shot, and my 8-yo daughter was nailing them about 1 in 3 -- and this was her first time out shooting. She actually adapts to the oversized gun better than my boy when he was her age. What can I say -- they're both naturals. $:-)
Offhand, though, this hbar gets heavy fast, although my son did get a couple of hits within a couple of inches from one poodle at about 75m. If it had been a rabbit, we'd have been having stew. He also got to inspect a few that my bro and I had nailed, and displayed no squeamishness at all. He's got the Brower genes, all right.
Me? I had my Colt R6601 (AR15A2 HBAR sans bayo lug) that I had mailed out a month previously. Stock config w/iron sights, using Lake City M855 green-tip that I had drop-shipped from ammoman.com. I got one poodle offhand at about 60m, and it flipped the critter a foot off the deck and backwards; pretty much vivisected. A couple more occasions had me chasing them on the move at about 150-200m, with hits getting within a few inches on several occasions; eventually I had to stop because I was laughing too hard. First blood for that particular rifle.
Iron sights on prairie dogs, that’s giving them a chance!