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.

CO Duck Hunting 11/11/09

Wednesday morning Forrest and I made our way back to Hillrose, Colorado for our opener to the second split. We found ourselves in 31 degrees and a dense fog that almost saw the silverado end up in a ditch as the road disappeared. After navigating over some closed railroad tracks we had to set up quick.

Luckily the fog delayed shooting light about ten minutes which allowed us to settle in. Right away we had ducks working our area. This lead to the first great duck of the day, a Drake North American Shoveler, a beauty no doubt, Forrest is still contemplating putting it on the wall. Thanks to the blizzard 10 days ago a lot of the ducks had moved on to warmer areas. All day it seemed as if ducks were working the area. The next duck to meet it's end was a Gadwall, unfortunately I was spraying some breakup into the 1187. After settling back in, I decided we needed a hen spooney to go with that drake, by 6:40, mission accompished. At this point Forrest noticed a leak in his waders which forced a move to the nearby levee. Once reaching the levee I put on a shooting display. First a hen Pintail met her end at about 55 yards and then two minutes later we added another Gadwall to the bag, me cleaning up Forrests mess.

In an attempt to warm up his legs Forrest walked the property. At this time I had a greenhead and two fully dressed Pintails working the spread. Luck would have it they all landed right where Forrest was walking. After sneaking through the grass Forrest polished off one of the two pinnys.

We added one more Gadwall to the bag before packing up around 11:00. A good day, and I will be back at it Sat and Sun while Forrest goes out to Maryland for the World Goose.

Colorado Duck Opener

10/3/09. Last Saturday I found myself west of Brush, CO on some state property with my friends Forrest, Dave and Forrest's lady friend for the 2009 first split opener. We arrived at 4:30 and the four of set out for our reserved pond. We set out our 3 dozen floaters, 2 jerk-strings and 4 robo-ducks and settled in for 30 minutes before sunrise. As we were setting up the birds started moving in and out of our area, which had recently been flooded by the D.O.W. As shooting light approached a sophisticated group of yahoo's were shooting only 11 minutes early, as it was still pitch black out minus the moon light. As the minutes counted down we had 6-8 fully dressed sprigs land in our dekes, very dissappointing they didn't hang around till shooting light.

As 6:21 hit, it sounded like a small war just erupted in Hillrose, CO. The four of us waited patiently for the big birds to start flying. Much to our disappointment the ducks that were working our spread were forced to swing over the corner of another pond and luckily those boys had no problem throwing some steel at everything. As the sun began to rise the birds started to pour in. The first ducks to commit were 3 mallards, luckily for us, none made it out, with the 3 boys all making simple 1 shot kills. While trying to hold of on the 1000's of teal in the area a poor single made his death plunge right at me where he was backpedaling at 10 yrds. 2 shots, 2 kills. Then it seemed about every 5 minutes or so we had new flocks working the spread, with the robos and jerks in full gear every duck wanted into our spot. This lead to 3 widgeons and 2 susies going down in seconds of one another.

By 7:15 we were at 14 birds to our 24 duck limit. Around this time we had a group of 4 mallards working the spread as they commited in 2 broke of to my side, and for the first time in long time I had a two shot drake Mallard double. My day had to end by 8:00 for soccer so as a flock of BWT came across the horizon, it was decided they should meet their end, eventually all 6 did as the lone survivor decided to circle back to check on his brethern, poor decision indeed. I was out at 8:15 and left them 5 short of the final count. By 9:15 Forrest let me know they were all done and packing up the gear. By far my best CO opener and one of the better openers ever as far as shooting and big ducks go.