If you travel to hunt with Mad Dog
and you need to stay over, he has made arrangements with a few local motels that almost guarantee you a room at a much discounted corporate rate. I paid $45.00 a night for a room with two double beds and the motel provided a free breakfast of toast, waffles, cereal, pastries, coffee, fruit, and juice. All more than adequate to start your day. Mike comes to pick you up at 8:00 a.m. and, depending on the heat, weather, and time of year, you will shoot until dark. If it is too hot, you will come back in at 1:00 p.m. +/- and go back out at ap- proximately 4:30 until dark. You pay Mad Dog by the day and
not by the gun. He gets a fixed price for his day and you can have as many shooters as you want up to a maximum of three. I go by myself or one other shooter as I do not want to share the shot opportunities with too many. Now, the best of all is his very high
tech shooting vehicle. He drives a four- door 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. I have seen better cars crushed in my friend’s salvage yard. But the alleged benefit is it has a flat roof because that is what you shoot off. Yes, you shoot off the roof. But do not despair, as Mad Dog provides sandbags as rests for the gun. I once made the error of putting my Caldwell metal rifle rest on the roof and Mad Dog ripped me for potentially scratching the roof of the car. The rifle rest was worth about half the value of the car. But I have to acknowledge, the car works and goes everywhere it needs to. And, the farmers all recognize the powder blue heap as Mad Dog’s groundhog buggy, which has a rack installed in the trunk to safely and care- fully hold four rifles. I inquired of Mad Dog to what
he attributes the prolific population of groundhogs in Ohio. He says it is a con- fluence of a combination of coincidental favorable items. The groundhogs seem to like gravelly soil which is easy to dig and drains well, and the easy rolling hills. Also, Ohio is a strong farming state and produces alfalfa and soybeans, two of the favorite forages of groundhogs. Ohio has all these, and as a result also has an enormous groundhog popula- tion. Thank you, Ohio! I have taken a number of literary
shots at Mike Mad Dog Gruff, but I would show up tomorrow to hunt with
www.varminthunter.org Page 147
1st Class Accommodations • Package Hunts Available 360° Shooting Benches and Bags Provided 40+ Different PD Towns • Guided
605-669-3440 Contact Brett Waibel:
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him again and again. He is an adventure in and of himself. The only downside is the white fog you must shoot through created by his perpetual chain smoking that will ultimately be his undoing. His concern for the comfort and safety of his clients is paramount and he is totally and completely persnickety about gun safety and obeying the game laws. He knows you just can never be too safe. Some clients will ultimately try to de- feat the odds if he is not persistent in reminding them how to safely retrieve, mount, and store the rifles, and when and where to shoot. One of the things I am most envi-
ous about is that Mad Dog has repeat- edly said he never regrets having to get up in the morning and go to work as he absolutely loves what he does. I asked who instilled this love of the outdoors and hunting in him. I got back a glowing recitation of his close relationship with his father. His dad started him hunting and introduced him to safe gun han- dling at a very early age, and Mike still uses the guns his dad gave him before he died. Quite a sentimental testament to a father/son relationship from an old Mad Dog.
the 2011 prairie dog season! If you are interested in a ground-
hog shooting adventure and meeting a unique character, then I cannot recom- mend Mad Dog enough, a.k.a. “the groundhog curmudgeon guide.” He can be reached at North Central Ohio Var- mint Express. Telephone 419-565-5041. His website is
www.ncovarmintexpress. com. You will even find my picture there from one of my earlier hunts in his “Hall of Fame.” I am much more handsome in real life. Now I hear that the state of Vir-
ginia may be a possible contender with its groundhog population. But I have no personal experience there primarily because there is no groundhog guide in the state I am aware of … or anywhere else that I know. Maybe Mad Dog needs to open a branch there and call it North Central Virginia Varmint Express Two. Now, believe this or not, I did not
intend this article to be about Mad Dog. I initially wanted to focus on hunting groundhogs in Ohio. But, I soon came to realize that they both are synonymous in Ohio. Just like bread and butter, or in Mike’s case “bees and honey.”
Now booking for
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