Denver area bird hunters

[Bigjay73]

Where do you hunt? All of my bird hunting is at least a 3 hr drive, not easy to do every weekend. Not looking for specifics just general areas out of curiosity, or are you making that drive every week all season long?

 

[Sheltowee]

Where do you hunt? All of my bird hunting is at least a 3 hr drive, not easy to do every weekend. Not looking for specifics just general areas out of curiosity, or are you making that drive every week all season long?

Wild birds or put and take?

 

[Bigjay73]

Wild

 

[tormenter]

To me heading 3 hours East of the Front Range is not a big deal. Heading West sucks with all of the heavy traffic. One can easily spend 1-2 hours most days traveling North or South thru Denver.

Personally, I go to Kansas as all of the areas I know in CO aren't typically worth the time. I still try and make it 3 day or more trip though. It has been decades since CO has worth a hoot. I did hear from a land owner around Wray/Yuma this year that the hunting pressure was down - but so were the birds. Public land CO birds are some of the smartest birds in the world. It is amazing that even on opening day they can act like they have been hunted hard.

 

[Green Hunter]

I am also very curious! My son wants to get out and chase something... I've never hunted pheasants but it seemed like an adventure for us. It's not worth going after squirrels, they are so small out here.

 

[rideold]

I've switched from hunting in CO to just making trips to South Dakota. A week on the grasslands is equal to years of hunting in Colorado.

 

[cedahm]

I've switched from hunting in CO to just making trips to South Dakota. A week on the grasslands is equal to years of hunting in Colorado.

i make a similar comment every year it seems. We see more birds in 5 days in SD than a year or two of hard hunting in CO.

But for me, anecdotally, when I first hunted pheasants in CO in the late 90’s, we used to hunt ~1-1.5h from town. When the WIA program started, we ended up with a lot of company and started moving further N and E.

After some permissions lapsed (1 landowner passed away, 1 leased his ground and 1 lost most of their birds to severe hail one spring), we moved even further East.

Then, as bird numbers continued to decline, we started mixing in Nebraska and a couple trips to NW KS.

Now, we will give CO a few 2-day shots, but that’s about it. I generally try and go out on a weekday and spend the night, since my appetite for day trips that have 3-4 hour drives each way has dried up.

I’ve heard rumors of bird numbers getting better in some of the closer-in counties, but unsubstantiated.

I also saw a rooster pheasant cross the road in downtown Littleton last year, I assume an escaped pet, but maybe I should just run the dog down Main Street