T Bone
Well-known member
some may have heard we had a 100 year storm system move through the area a few weeks ago. I've been concerned about the bird and deer, antelope survival.
This morning I made it up on the hill. Finding a place to park was tough because of the snow along the roads. Still LOTS of snow, but a few bare spots on the south facing slopes. On the north sides its 5+ feet deep.
On about every bare spot there are chukars. After jumping the 2nd covey I declared it open season and starting killing birds. Bonnie, my GSP was squirrley at first then settled into her normal self. In 3 hours getting limit was a gimme.
While locating the birds was easy, getting from bare spot to the next was a lot of work.
While there is decent survival of birds, we did find lots of fresh remains of dead ones. Not sure if they were trapped under all the snow, died, and got scavenged when it melted down or if they were killed by predators.
The deer are taking hard hits. Found 4 dead ones all in the deep snow on the north facing slopes. 3 were fawns, 1 a forked horn. Looks like they got high centered.
I'm guessing the antelope got hit hard as well.
My take is that the birds population is plenty healthy to seed next years hatch. The deer and lope are in trouble.
This morning I made it up on the hill. Finding a place to park was tough because of the snow along the roads. Still LOTS of snow, but a few bare spots on the south facing slopes. On the north sides its 5+ feet deep.
On about every bare spot there are chukars. After jumping the 2nd covey I declared it open season and starting killing birds. Bonnie, my GSP was squirrley at first then settled into her normal self. In 3 hours getting limit was a gimme.
While locating the birds was easy, getting from bare spot to the next was a lot of work.
While there is decent survival of birds, we did find lots of fresh remains of dead ones. Not sure if they were trapped under all the snow, died, and got scavenged when it melted down or if they were killed by predators.
The deer are taking hard hits. Found 4 dead ones all in the deep snow on the north facing slopes. 3 were fawns, 1 a forked horn. Looks like they got high centered.
I'm guessing the antelope got hit hard as well.
My take is that the birds population is plenty healthy to seed next years hatch. The deer and lope are in trouble.
