Saturday’s 82 degree high tied a record for the date. Never mind–the birds flew early and steadily, and by eight o’clock we were picking up with Iris having made 13 retrieves that included marked doubles, some long blinds, a pintail drake, a gadwall drake and hen, a mallard drake and nine teal (mostly greenwings.)

These are two of my newest paintings. “Dove Junction” has gone to InSight Gallery. “Tails at One O’clock” has been sent to The Sportsman’s Gallery in Atlanta.

That’s what we had for opening day—rain and wind most of the day. In all my years of waterfowling in Colorado, I’ve only hunted in the rain one other time. We’re spoiled. It made for an interesting day. While the action was kind of slow and the shooting rusty, the dogs each got to retrieve, and we were able get work done on an old blind and a new portable one. We were also able to repair a water diversion gate on the creek and get water out on a field where it should attract both ducks and geese the way it used to before the wash-out last year. As we sat in the creek blind in the afternoon, we watched and listened to quite a display of cock pheasants flying back and forth in a nearby grassy field and even up into a lone Russian olive. At times there were more than a dozen roosters in that tree. We also managed a couple more mallards. Finally, we were caught picking up the decoys prematurely by a small bunch of mallards. When will we learn?

It was a pleasant, though wet, start. No complaints. In the next few weeks the migration should bring us better prospects.