Yesterday we had a wonderful day hunting the big three of the wing shooters world, Ducks, Geese and Pheasants. Where else in Colorado can you shoot almost a four man limit of ducks, a goose and six Pheasants? Only in Eastern Colorado can you do this.
We woke up at 1:45 in the morning, some of us a little later than that and you know who you are, all in an effort to shoot a couple of ducks and try to locate some pheasants, if we had the time. Let me tell you that we were all pleasantly surprised by how well the hunt worked out.
We set up in some flooded red willows with about 3 inches of water and about the same amount of mud, which made walking or really anything for that matter very difficult. The birds started working right from the beginning, responding to our calls very well and did not stop until we were only one duck shy of our four man limit, which was at about 9:30am.
From there we left the lake and drove toward Haxtun, Colorado in Phillips County, to see if we could get the dogs on some birds. While driving up highway 59 we were astonished by the number of birds running and flying alongside the road, right then and there we knew that this day was only going to get better. After a couple of walk-in-access fields and well performing dogs, we picked up six roosters to add to our mixed bag of waterfowl consisting of mallard, gadwall, shoveler, wigeon, teal and a goose.
Trip Stats:
Ducks – 23
Geese – 1
Pheasants – 6
It was good to get out for the first real big game hunt of the year. We had 3 buck tags for game units 4,441,214, and 14, basically between Steamboat Springs and Craig. We camped in the Craig Campground (formerly the Craig KOA) and it was a very nice place to stay.
