How’d everyone do?

Curious as well.
My GSP was still healing from getting neutered so I wasn't too anxious. I'll take him and his big brother (lab) out this weekend and see what we can find.
 
Was a little warm but once we figured out where they were hiding, we were able to get into the birds. Saw around 35-40 in total between Sunday and Monday. 80% were hens which is good for next season but either way was great to see a good pheasant population.
 
Saw around 20-25 roosters but they were flushing early with the warm weather. Bagged a young one and missed a couple easy ones. Exciting to see the numbers up!
 
We went on Monday when the air temperature was 7 degrees at 7 am. The public field we hit early revealed 3 hens and a sharpie. Our next field was private, and we worked it hard. Unfortunately, the 12 birds that flushed were all hens. The next private field had 10 roosters, and we took 3. The last public field looked amazing. We quickly found 3 freshly cleaned bird carcasses as we started to walk so we knew our chances were slim.

I am hopeful that this season will be a good one.

The video.

https://youtu.be/JBX6XhZ9Oho
 
Cool video as usual.
I noticed your dog didn't have and booties on. How were the thorns/ goat-heads/ stickers?

Thank you for watching. Appreciate it. Early in the day, Echo hit goat heads....three times. It was bad. I should have booted her. Today, we hit sand burrs real bad. I may boot her tomorrow. A friend (landowner) told me that the same burrs are bad this year.
 
Was out yesterday. Saw lots of quail. Managed to get one. Also shot one rooster. Bird numbers seemed pretty good. Started to get pretty warm plus the Burrs made it a short day.
 
Made it to Baca county opening day and Yuma mid week. Both trips were worth the drive. Bird numbers seem pretty good, although they are definitely wise already. Gotta be smart with how you hunt them and be willing to put in the boot leather. If you can find friends blockers definitely help.

When I block I try to hide in the weeds at the end. When buddies were out and visible they were peaking out and running back 50 yards before flushing between. When I stay hidden quiet and still I was often hearing them coming and both me and the bird would panic when they walked into view 3 feet away. And yes, I mean I missed a few of those chances: )
 
Saturday was mainly a scouting trip for us. Bumped one rooster out of reach and had a few hens hold fairly tight for some doggy practice. Lots of hunters and lots of standing crop lead to a fairly short day, especially after the wind started gusting pretty hard.

Thanks for the heads up on the stickers Walk213. Surprisingly we managed without throwing the booties on the dogs. Unheard of this early in the season.

Brute
 
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Opening Weekend was packed. Some standing corn, so birds were hard to find. Frustratingly, we saw a group of about 20 hunters hit different quarters. They used pushers and blockers, and walked some of the standing corn (some was walk-in, some was private. I know the group walked some private grass without permission.) But, we heard multiple barrages, probably the blockers shooting at all that flushed at the end of the field.

My personal opinion is there is no room for that in Colorado. Assuming they crippled and lost even 20% of what they shot at (in standing corn, many dogs can't find the runners), and if they came close to limits for everyone (another assumption is that they were group-hunting), they took lots of birds out of the population in one weekend. Nowhere in Colorado can stand that kind of population reduction and still have good hunting the rest of the season. The Dakotas have many more birds, so they can withstand a decimation like that, but not Colorado. Why do people feel it is okay to comb fields like that, where there are not huge populations of birds? Doesn't seem sporting, to me.

This past weekend, lots fewer hunters - and no large groups! Took lots of walking, but we saw some birds, and got a few. Not nearly as many birds as in past seasons. Could be the weather, as it was pretty warm, again.
 
Good post Logical. There are those who ‘like to hunt’, and then there are those who are ‘hunters’. The former just want to “get theirs” the couple days they might be out in a season. The latter tend to be more conservation-minded, care more for the resource, belong to conservation groups, etc.

The lack of ethics and respect for natural resources really bothers me. I was a wildlife biologist in a midwestern state. I was responsible for several state wildlife area and would go around on Mondays and just get frustrated and pissed off at all the garbage left in parking areas, etc. Heck, I went out yesterday and hunted a stay wildlife area along the Platte and picked up 47 empty shotgun hulls and five empty water bottles.

Another example - goose hunters. These younger folks hunting today for ‘likes’ and ‘posts’ and ‘x man limits’ with their barrel stickers and “pro staff” mentality shoot into these big flocks as they come into their mega spreads. They shoot and empty their fan boy guns and hoot and holler “smoked em” and “whacked ‘em” and high fives all around.

I’m in sales now and drive all over the state, and on Mondays and Tuesday’s in and around the Ft. Collins/Loveland/Greeley area there are random dead geese on the roads, around parks, ball fields, gold courses, etc. I’ve seen a few birds flying with a flock all of a sudden get lower and lower and just die and fall out of the sky. These random dead geese are the birds that are marginally hit during these barrages into these large flocks. They suffer for a day or two until they succumb.

Why not shoot at the birds on the edges? Why not pick out single birds closer, lower, whatever and not ‘flock shoot’. The big group pheasant gangs are similar. They take marginal shots which are too far, birds fly away with legs hanging down, etc. and they’ll say “coyotes gotta eat, too!” Sad.....
 
Good post Logical. There are those who ‘like to hunt’, and then there are those who are ‘hunters’. The former just want to “get theirs” the couple days they might be out in a season. The latter tend to be more conservation-minded, care more for the resource, belong to conservation groups, etc.

The lack of ethics and respect for natural resources really bothers me. I was a wildlife biologist in a midwestern state. I was responsible for several state wildlife area and would go around on Mondays and just get frustrated and pissed off at all the garbage left in parking areas, etc. Heck, I went out yesterday and hunted a stay wildlife area along the Platte and picked up 47 empty shotgun hulls and five empty water bottles.

Another example - goose hunters. These younger folks hunting today for ‘likes’ and ‘posts’ and ‘x man limits’ with their barrel stickers and “pro staff” mentality shoot into these big flocks as they come into their mega spreads. They shoot and empty their fan boy guns and hoot and holler “smoked em” and “whacked ‘em” and high fives all around.

I’m in sales now and drive all over the state, and on Mondays and Tuesday’s in and around the Ft. Collins/Loveland/Greeley area there are random dead geese on the roads, around parks, ball fields, gold courses, etc. I’ve seen a few birds flying with a flock all of a sudden get lower and lower and just die and fall out of the sky. These random dead geese are the birds that are marginally hit during these barrages into these large flocks. They suffer for a day or two until they succumb.

Why not shoot at the birds on the edges? Why not pick out single birds closer, lower, whatever and not ‘flock shoot’. The big group pheasant gangs are similar. They take marginal shots which are too far, birds fly away with legs hanging down, etc. and they’ll say “coyotes gotta eat, too!” Sad.....

agree, i don't see the sport in walking with a 20 man army......what's the point? same bird usually gets shot multiple times, 3 ring circus with dogs added.....not to my liking, too many Sunday shooters who i could never trust.
 
Where we hunt, super dry conditions in mid summer through late fall resulted in very few birds. 960 acres of CRP, two trips, one rooster, one shot opportunity. Goat heads and burrs where they never were before. overall, the worst I have seen in 10 years.
 
Toughshed, is there any grain crop nearby this year? I have found that some of my CRP will produce only in the years where there are grain crops within half a mile. The years that the nearby fields have been in beets, or are now in new winter wheat, there are fewer birds. If there is corn, milo, or wheat stubble, those grass fields hold more birds.
 
I was hunting near Winner, SD during the CO opener so I missed that normal chaos. Since then I have 3 days in western NE and 8 days in eastern CO between I-70 and Wyoming. To me, bird numbers seem about the same as last year but in some different places due to hailstorms and crop rotations. And every year they seem to get smarter and smarter. It was a good year for the cover grasses to grow--maybe too good in some places. Some of the WIA properties have 4 foot tall dense switchgrass to wade through. That makes for tough walking, it's hard to keep track of your dogs, and hard for the dogs to find downed birds. I look at the days afield as payback to my labs for their companionship and the three vet trips this hunting season as part of the admission price. Nothing serious and both boys and I will be back at it after Jan. 1 when our relatives leave.
Tom
 
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