Stalking Chickens

Concern is mounting for Parker Robinson:
Parker's Aunt Ruth, worried that New York City is too dangerous a place for Parker to complete his community service, has taken it upon herself to have him transferred to the wilds of western Minnesota, where she imagines it will be safer, it being the idyllic land of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House on the Prairie.
Now Parker's job is to try to acquire virgin tallgrass prairies to help save the threatened Greater Prairie Chicken. But nobody informs either him or his aunt, that the Agassiz Beachline ––once the Gateway to the Wild West–– is as wild as ever. Peopled as it is by arsonists and hermits, smugglers and swindlers, and by crazed cowboys with psychotic tendencies that can turn violent at the drop of a Stetson.
His path leads him to burning trestle bridges, exploding grain elevators, into mystery caves and to uncomfortable meetings with a Dancing Potato tycoon, an Annie-Oakley-style sharpshooter and the seedy owner of a local strip club. Along the way, he encounters rattlesnakes, menacing gravel trucks, an out-of-control prairie wildfire, as well as a life-threatening winter storm.
The main question we are left with is: if this region is so much safer than New York City, then why has Parker received three separate attempts on his life?
Stalking Chickens the third book of the trilogy, which includes Stalking Bulls and Stalking Lions.