Prairie Dog Shoot Battle Sets Off War of Words : Environment: Hunters and protesters trade insults as the bullets fly. A small Colorado town hopes the contest will bring in needed money.

This was supposed to be a prairie dog shooting contest, but you could hardly hear the gunfire for the cross fire: the shout-down between visiting environmentalists and residents of this rural community.

“Boys, shoot the hell outta them!” Rusty Hines encouraged the hunters, and then, to chanting animal rights activists: “You, go eat lettuce!”

“It takes a big tough man to shoot a little bitty prairie dog!” answered the women of the Sangre de Cristo animal protection group.

Ah, wilderness.

On Saturday’s opening day of what this town is calling the first world championship prairie dog shoot--and getting no argument on that--the main attraction was how hunters and their supporters in this western Colorado town of 820 people squared off with animal rights protesters.

The prairie dog brought both sides here, some to save it, some to shoot it. What happened Saturday had more to do with subculture than with a critter about the size of a can of beer, one ranchers consider a varmint harmful to crops and livestock and that environmentalists see as part of the ecosystem.

Nucla is a withering little burg abandoned years ago by uranium mine operators, and now townspeople are turning to the lowly prairie dog to get things going again.

“We don’t subscribe to New Age philosophy--peace, love and vegetarian rights,” said contest organizer Mike Mehew, who sought a public relations bonanza and got it, including a thumbs-down from Democratic Gov. Roy Romer.

“This country breeds hard people, and we want to attract those people and to repel a lot of individuals who want to make it candyland”--people, Mehew said, like the ones who stood along Highway 141, yelling at hunters.

About 40 protesters, nowhere near the throng expected to challenge Colorado’s untested anti-hunter-harassment law, cruised the highways looking for contestants in the hunt. The protesters were outnumbered nearly 2 to 1 by law officers. A lot of no-shows had been too nervous to come, worried that they might provide more tempting targets than prairie dogs, said veterinarian Cordell Leif of the Rocky Mountain Humane Society.

Leif, an ex-cop, stood on the public side of a barbed wire fence and watched the hunters as they lay prone, waiting. “I’ve worked undercover, and I’m more nervous out here,” he said.

Activists chanted to spook the prey and to hold their own in shouting matches.

Two protesters said they were spat on--one with tobacco juice--as they picketed outside the Moose Lodge pre-hunt pancake breakfast, and two others were cited for sitting down in a private lane to keep hunters off the site. The rest of them got drive-by needling from the cabs of pickup trucks, such as: “Go eat tofu.” (For the record, the Nucla market carries tofu and kiwi fruit.)

The shoulders of Highway 141 were bumper to bumper with applauding spectators. Two mothers brought their nine children to picnic on a pink blanket as they watched the shoot.

People in these parts had seen prairie dogs shot before and have shot quite a few themselves. Sharon Gordon’s son, Mark, sat on a porch last weekend, watching cartoons and popping prairie dogs as they poked their heads up.

What they haven’t seen are TV vans and picket lines, and Gordon was out in front of the Moose Lodge on Saturday taking pictures.

“What are you gonna shoot when the prairie dogs are gone?” the picketers chanted. Ethel Pogue, Gordon’s aunt, couldn’t resist. “Protesters,” she called, to general guffaws.

The shouting kind of overshadowed the day’s main event for awhile, even though 108 hunters from 11 states had paid $100 entry fees to compete for $7,000 in prizes.

But when the smoke and noise cleared, 2,379 shots had been fired and the prairie dog population had been reduced by 1,162 with another day of shooting scheduled today.

With 50 shots per hunter a day allowed, points were docked for misses: “Some of these guys have negative scores,” murmured Mehew.

But, as Mehew figured, it was good for business. Motels were full for the first time in memory. High school cheerleaders sold “dawg gone good lemonade” in the town park in the shadow of a seven-foot-tall woodcarving of a prairie dog. Eastern Star members sold bumper stickers--”Let us handle our dogs our way”--and a children’s storybook about prairie dogs, “The Mayor of Prairieville.” On the back cover, they had tried to scratch out the author’s line: “So many creatures have been destroyed that there is hardly a remnant of them left.”

The hunters kept out of the fray, escorted to and from private hunting fields, like the one where Scott Dillon took some. He said the land is part of a horse ranch owned by a New York woman who “thought the dogs were cute at first. Now she calls them rats in fur coats.”

The National Rifle Assn. faxed in guidelines to help, urging gun safety. “Keep your cool,” it said. “Don’t unnecessarily display dead animals to the protesters. Remember, the main reason they are there is that they believe you are a crazy, bloodthirsty, inhumane person. Making them cringe by flaunting bloody animals or animal parts may seem funny, but it only fosters their inaccurate impression of hunters . . . remember that you are a part of the greatest conservation group in history. You are a hunter.”