HOLYOKE — One week into Colorado’s 2014 pheasant hunting season, the scouting report looks a bit like a highlight reel. There’s some consistency, some confusion and a whole lot of swinging and missing going on out there.
The knuckleball nobody saw coming on the heels of a warm, dry season opener Nov. 8 arrived in the form of an arctic blast that sent fair-weather wing-shooters home to their heaters while the birds dived for deep cover and hunkered down. That rather abrupt changeup pushing the mercury from somewhere near 60 degrees down to single digits effectively voided last weekend’s field reports for the time being, but there are some trends worth noting.
Among them, hunting in warm weather is hard. Sure, it’s nice to stroll the prairie in shirt sleeves, but the heat poses problems for dogs attempting to pick up scent and wears them out all the quicker. Because they can, the birds spread themselves out, forcing dogs and hunters to cover a lot of ground between flushes.
“We had nine guns this year, all seasoned upland hunters and plenty of dog power. We started at 7:45 a.m. and got our limit 10 minutes before sunset,” Ronnie Precht of Denver said of his annual opening-day hunt near Holyoke. “The conditions were tough. Very warm and dry made scenting conditions less than optimal. That coupled with 50 percent of the corn still standing and the challenge was formidable.”
Until the weather turned and birds began bunching up midweek, it was difficult to discern whether Colorado’s pheasant populations had begun to after the drought years of 2012 and 2013. Despite the continued loss of CRP fields, the habitat in northeastern Colorado has returned in a big way, and several hunters saw evidence of the positive impact this year’s moisture has had.
“We played ‘small ball’ and hunted unlikely, off-the-beaten-path fields in Yuma County — all public access. We were able to hunt cover that most pass up because there were just two of us in our hunting party,” said Ray Quilas of Erie. “Truth be told, I should have had my limit by noon … but you gotta connect. Oh well, bird numbers were up from last year.”
While it’s never a given, there has been evidence of consistency in the northeast corner of the state when it comes to pheasant populations. Enough so that the geographic triangle formed by the towns of Holyoke, Yuma and Sterling has earned a reputation as Colorado’s “golden” triangle for pheasant hunting and managed to attract the attention of the conservation organization Pheasants Forever, which included the area as a stop during its annual for the first time last week.
“To this gathering’s credit, every hunter was diligent about safety to the point of being overly polite when the first rooster cackled to the sky at 20 yards in front of the center of our line. It was that Colorado pheasant’s lucky day with every gun’s muzzle safely pointed straight up and every safety firmly engaged in each hunter’s hand,” PF’s Bob St. Pierre recounted from their day. “The second rooster must have figured his chances as good as the first and he was right. Even the third rooster flushed without a shot fired. Finally, Ed Gorman, a Pheasants Forever chapter member and Parks and Wildlife employee, swung on a fourth rooster that was not to be so lucky as the first three pardoned birds.”
Plummeting temperatures and blustery winds eventually forced the party to retreat, but a cold-weather hunt later in the week showed evidence that those lucky roosters and many more hens remain. Grouped in dense grasses and shelter belts, they are hesitant to fly as they make use of this season’s crop of thick cover while the cold and snow remain. But there are pheasants around, and as conditions settle, local upland hunters can expect to see some relief.
Scott Willoughby: swilloughby@denverpost.com or twitter.com/swilloughby
