Saturday, March 30, 2024

Going Feral: The 2023 Season. Third Year (or more) Running

Going Feral: The 2023 Season. Third Year (or more) Running

The 2023 Season. Third Year (or more) Running


I noted last year, when I did this report, the following:

The 2022 Season

The 2022 hunting season has ended.

In 2022, when I wrote about the 2021 season, I started off with this:

 It wasn't a great one, for a variety of reasons.

And that statement was true once again for 2022, but for different reasons, a lot of which had nothing much to do with the hunting season itself.

That's because 2022 has been the year of the field of Medicine, or age, or perhaps lifestyle, or whatever, catching up with me.

Well, I'm beginning to sound like a broken record on that, as it was once again quite true.

On big game, I didn't draw anything.  So, no antelope tag again.

Indeed, sometime in the fall, in one of the blogs linked in here, an out-of-state hunter posted about the great time he'd had in Wyoming antelope hunting and I nearly posted a crabby linked in post regarding that.  If out of staters are getting tags, in staters should be.

I didn't want to insult that person, so I didn't make that post, but I'm still not very happy about it.

I had general deer and elk tags, and I did go out for deer, but no luck.  For deer, I did have a very pleasant early winter hunt, if that's what we call this frighteningly warm mid-year season this year, but the only white tails, and that's what it was limited to, that we saw were on private land where I didn't have permission.  So, no deer.

Bird wise, the season was good for the most part.  Blue Grouse, which are illusive in my experience (a Game Warden who checked me didn't seem to think so) did make an appearance this year, so we did okay, but not great.



Doves were abundant, but I mostly missed shooting at them, which was sort of the story of the year in a lot of ways.  I did get a Mongolian Collared Dove for the first time, so was able to appreciate how much larger they are than Mourning Doves.


Sage chickens were also plentiful this year.



Chukars and Huns, which are in my experience very hard to hit, were abundant, but I didn't do well with them as I missed them more than I hit them.  I did get in a lot of late season chukar hunting close to town for the first time.


Waterfowl, which we hunted more than anything else, was very abundant.


So, not a self-reliance banner year. . . or was it?

Last Prior Edition:

The 2022 Season

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