Opening Wknd Notes/Observations:
Sat/Day 1: Hunted the Burlington Rooster Round-Up w/a few brand new UPH friends just to say I did it once in my lifetime - a slice of rural Americana tradition complete with community breakfast, orange wave & a bird dog parade of just about every kind known to man (check-mark & a Big Ol' X for me from here forward). Was in the chill mode & didn't have my sights set real high, so wasn't too disappointed. stel67 & beboswell were right on target in their observations - 1st time I've gotten totally skunked in yrs (our small group never even fired a shot)! Bird numbers were DISMAL & decent cover for the most part was pretty much non-existent. Bird/wildlife habitat is obviously not very high on many Burlington farmers totem pole - that & in all fairness, both hailstorms & a mid-summer onward drought that were devastating to both crops & birds. I have been hunting a wide swath in the overall general region for the past several yrs & it has historically been very good to me, but not so this yr - even a couple of the very best private places that have been some of my standby go-to honey-holes with hundreds of birds for the last 2-3 yrs showed only a token/trickle of a dozen birds or so & cover was a mere 1/4 of the height it was last yr. I hunted in the area on January 31st last day of the season & there were still a ton of carryover birds. I fully understand the no-hatch part of the equation, but it sure does make a man scratch his head & wonder how on earth that many adult birds can possibly just go poof into thin air in such a short time???
Probably won't be going back to the area much till things bounce back in a yr (or two or three) - would feel almost as guilty right now about shooting the few remaining down on their luck seed-stock pheasants in this area as shooting down a small covey of quail to nothing...
P.S. I was also sorely reminded of why I almost NEVER go pheasant hunting on opening day!!!
Still had a really good time & accomplished a lot - no day of hunting is ever a waste & was able to at least cross rather large sections off my this yrs hunting list...
Sun/Day 2: Went for another quick & profitless token early-morning field-walk with friends & then said our goodbyes around 9 a.m. After they left, I thoroughly enjoyed the silence & solitude all alone out on the prairie for the remainder of the day with just me & my dog (was a quiet day with far fewer hunters than the day before). Started heading northward & poked around a few pits & small patches/corners with the dog, scouting along the way - finally scratched up my first rooster of the yr (should've had two if I hadn't already cracked open the over-&-under when the other half-dozen decided to explode out of that tiny little patch, might have even gotten three if I was carrying a pump or auto instead of a double). Put up several hens along the way & one smart, OLD rooster put his wicked mojo on me & the dog, running like a wild banshee way out ahead, never even flushing to offer a shot until faraway-low barely above the ground & it was basically a hail-Mary shot (which I took anyway)!
One other small bachelor group of obviously OLD & wily roosters easily put the slip on what I thought was a pretty well-designed pinch move (I didn't run across any young-of-the-year dimwits, all of the birds I saw were already acting like cagey, seasoned vets & my one rooster in the bag was a long-spur as well)...By a little be4 noon figured out I couldn't do both, so opted to sacrifice the hunting for a this-yrs-update scouting run & logged on about 250 high-speed miles covering large sections & stopping to grid a few promising roads in search of what I was looking for, making appropriate use of binocs & notations on the map. Found the moisture/rain line where good/solid cover began kicking in, farmers obviously cared for wildlife habitat/margins & significantly more birds were sighted. Was a good move to choose scouting over hunting so early-on in the season & found places (including several magically placed tall-grass WIHA's immediately adjacent to or surrounded by corn) that will pay off in extra dividends later in the season. Was happy to see that not all the corn was down everywhere I went, which translates to more birds saved for later. Finished up my homework with a few distant phone calls to farmer friends & very encouraged to know that all is not lost & CO pheasants are still thriving well in a number of locations. But don't even bother asking for GPS coordinates or specific "areas" because prime CO pheasant turf is rather limited in the first place (& even more-so this yr) - I'm not about to give away for free to the masses what I have busted my @$$ for & spent thousands of miles and dollars & burnt up several hundred miles of boot leather to learn/acquire over the yrs & have to re-do to some extent every single yr moving with constantly changing crops and conditions. Do your own homework, be a student of wildlife & habitat, learn from every experience, pay attention to detail, take notes along the way & you will find what you're looking for - they are here & still thick in some places, I promise! :cheers:
