Dear Otus,
I'm new to Arkansas and just learned that we have a prairie dog hunting season. How can anybody shoot those adorable little critters? It'd be like hunting kittens!
-- Medlar Sterns,
Eureka Springs
Dear Medlar,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you. For all things prairie dog, I turn to the state expert, Charles "Cooter" Cotham, curator emeritus of the Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie in Stuttgart.
Read about the legendary Cotham at grandprairiemuseum.org.
"Don't let those big brown eyes and supple pelage fool ya," Cotham says. "Prairie dogs are mean, got 22 teeth and the front ones'll take a chunk outta your hand the size of a half dollar."
Cotham has the scars to prove it and always wears thick leather work gloves when handling the dozen black-tailed prairie dogs on display at the museum.
"And don't forget," he adds, "the Cynomys ludovicianus has razor-sharp burrowing claws that can gut the family cat faster than you can spit."
Cotham and his longtime hunting partner, Durwood "Dog-Man" Dierks of Des Arc, have made every opening day of Arkansas prairie dog season for 42 years. It takes them about eight hours, but they always bag near their limit.
"We figure we got maybe 65 or 70 in the cages in the back of the pickup," Cotham said Tuesday evening. "We'd have more, but Dog-Man tumped a sack and a bunch of the critters high-tailed it into the woods."
The daily harvest limit is 75. There's no differentiation between males (bucks) or females (does).
Prairie dog season this year runs from July 28 through Sept. 6 in all four counties of Arkansas' Grand Prairie -- Arkansas, Prairie, Lonoke, and Monroe -- which once covered 900,000 acres.
Arkansas Game and Fish officials estimate between 40,000 and 60,000 dogs will be taken by the state's 7,238 hunters who've bought prairie dog stamps for their licenses.
Cotham and Dierks are the state's eight-time defending prairie dog hunting champions in the annual Big Prairie Dog Classic. The four-day event will be held this year on the Prairie County Courthouse grounds at DeValls Bluff beginning Sept. 3.
The duo don't shoot the critters. Instead they use their champion prairie dog dachshund, Mr. T, to locate the burrows, then determine the probable exit hole.
Cotham then selects the proper size firecracker for the burrow entrance (usually a 50-milligram M-80 or 30-milligram Silver Salute), puts on his ear protection and ... ker-blooy!
If all has been done correctly, dazed dogs stumble out the exit tunnel -- which can be 100 feet away -- and Dierks scoops them up into the canvas bag for later use (see below).
One hundred years ago there were an estimated 400 million prairie dogs in America. They were on the brink of extinction during the Great Depression, when they were highly prized for their tangy meat and delicate fur. A hunting ban covered most of their natural range from south Texas to Manitoba from 1945 to 1964.
But the diurnal creatures made a strong comeback in the latter part of the last century, extending their boundaries east to the Mississippi River, taking over entire farms and encroaching on schoolyards and golf courses.
If left unchecked, prairie dogs would invade urban settings. That's disturbing, because they can carry exotic zoonotic diseases such as dyshidrosis, witzelsucht and Stendhal syndrome.
A single prairie dog town can cover 1,000 acres and contain 138,000 animals. The towns are subdivided into wards with distinct social units called coteries. The towns, with their hundreds of burrows, can threaten careless livestock and small children with broken legs if there's a misstep.
"It's hard to sneak up on the sod poodles," Cotham said, chuckling. "They post sentries that bark at the slightest sign of danger. But they ain't too bright. If they are underground, they think they're safe."
"They also make good eatin'," Cotham said. "A 2-pound dog guts and skins down to about a half pound of lean meat, including prairie dog 'wings.'
"I like 'em battered and deep fried to be larrupin' good," Cotham said. "Make ya wanna smack your pappy. Chili allows just a few prairie dogs to go much further. You can feed a whole passel of folks with only 30 or so dogs."
The Stuttgart museum will hold its annual Prariehund Chili Supper on Oct. 8 using Cotham's freeze-dried dogs.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that although they are sometimes sold in pet stores, prairie dogs are feral creatures and do not make good pets.
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Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. Email:
HomeStyle on 08/01/2015