CO Waterfowl opening weekend

Saturday morning @ 5:00 a.m. I was back in the familiar town of Hillrose, CO for another opening weekend. I was hunting my favorite state land that had been flooded by the D.O.W 2 weeks prior. The weather was forcasted to be 70 and sunny, both false. As I began to set up the teal were buzzing the decoys early, in all we set up 30 mixed bag decoys with two Mojos and 1 jerk-string. Shooting time was supposed to be 6:20, but us and every other group was forced to wait about 15 minutes longer due to some fog and thick cloud cover.

The morning started off with 3 teal making their way through the decoys at about 85mph, after a swing and a miss by yours truly 2 other teal inexplicably got up from behind and flew right at me, BWT #1 was down. After that it seemed every 2 minutes or so new birds were in the area. The next ducks of the day were a hen gadwall and drake mallard that came out of the same flock on 3 shots. Soon after that I put the vector duck call to work calling in a single Drake Mallard for about 3-4 minutes, finally he made the mistake of cutting his turn a little short, one shot, another Drake in the bag.

The final 2 ducks of the day were a GWT and BWT that split the two mojo decoys and were dealt with swiftly. Yogi made her first official retrieve on the BWT. Clearly she needs a lot more work but she is still learning the game. Overall a great opener again, just waiting on the big ducks to increase in numbers.







Sunday found me back at the same pond with a couple of kids from my high school for my little hunting club I have started. Again we were set up early and the rest of the time was spent teaching Devlin the basics of duck hunting(as I know them to be at least). Since it was Devlin's first ever waterfowl hunt, he got first crack at the birds. Well that lasted about 2 minutes as 4 teal buzzed in from over head, turned the corner and split the mojo's again. Devlin didn't see the turn so I decided to put 2 BWT down after calling the shot and neither boy shooting. About 5 minutes later another 2 teal passed through the decoys, this time Devlin did not miss, 1 shot, 1 dead teal. After that the day slowed dramatically. besides the occasional big duck it was a lot of sitting around. Just when it was about time to pick up 3 mallards started listening to the Vector call and as they settled into the decoys, the drake split off to the right, and was dispatched by the 1187, unfortunately he tried to hide in the tall grass, after a solid tracking job he was found, trying to make a run for it, no luck there.

It was another successful opener, just need a cold front to come on through and get the birds out of the north.