Colorado’s pheasant prospects for the 2008-09 seasons are starting to sound like a weather report: wet and rosy in the far northeast, dry and bleak nearly everywhere else.
“It’s darn good (in) some places,” said Ed Gorman, small-game manager for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, of a moist zone that coincides happily with the state’s best traditional production points.
“It’s looking good in Phillips, Sedgwick and parts of Yuma counties. Eastern Logan also looks all right,” Gorman said of random observations gathered after the recent wheat harvest.
Following a traditional pattern, conditions are much drier in the tier of counties immediately to the west, a portent of poor cover and lagging chick survival. Gorman reserved the worst of his forecast for the extreme southeast.
“It’s super dry. Hunting will really be tough,” he declared following a recent tour of Baca County, where a well-defined patch of agricultural land has produced a banner batch of birds in recent years. “There’s a good holdover population of adults, but not many chicks.”
Gorman gives mixed reviews to semi-dry Kit Carson County, where some observers are optimistic after spotting numbers of adult birds.
“There’s still time to grow some weeds if it starts raining, but this snapshot doesn’t look good,” he said of the regions lacking moisture.
“The reality is much like every other year. Hunters should recognize these very dry places by the look of the cover and go someplace else.”
Gorman has good news for hunters concerned about the availability of Walk-in Program access in Yuma County, where farmers threatened a boycott over a water dispute.
“We have about the same acreage as always. We lost some guys and picked up some,” he said.
Charlie Meyers, The Denver Post
The seasons
Pheasant: Nov. 8-Jan. 19 east of Interstate 25. Nov. 8-Jan. 4 west of I-25.
Quail: Nov. 8-Jan. 4 east of I-25 and north of a line defined by Interstate 70 to Byers, then north of Highway 36 from Byers to the Kansas line. Nov. 8-Jan. 19 east of I-25 and south of a line defined by I-70 to Byers, then south of Highway 36 to the Kansas line. Nov. 8-Jan. 4 west of I-25.
