So was anyone hunting at Freezout this morning? It looked like a circus at around 9am when I came back by. People standing up all over the dikes, trucks packed into every little bit of parking space and more mojos than it seemed possible to count all over the complex. The FW guys at the check station said some guys were getting busted and a few had a great time. How was everyone else's opening day, be it Freezout or anywhere else, with the weather as warm as it was.
I had one of the best hunts of my life! Teal going crazy over the mojo, literally able to pick and choose which duck to shoot, notice no teal. :yes:
I'm from Choteau but moved to Ronan a couple months ago. Just hunted around here this weekend and it was a zoo yesterday morning here too. My little bro and his buddies hunted somewhere around Freezeout and killed 26. Freezeout hasn't been too crazy busy the past 4 or 5 years opening day but sounds like it was busy yesterday.
Unless you try just a tiny bit harder than the complete morons and walk a little farther...Freezeout can be awesome hunting. If you are around the sky busters and morons, you aren't putting much effort in. I've hunted Freezeout for 15 years and these guys you are talking about are rarely more than 1/4 mile from the parking areas. But even then, when I was in highschool I would run out, get down the dike a little ways and put a few dekes out and kill limits before dark.
I've got a swan for CF this year and will be over there this weekend. The few times I went last year I got peppered so many times and had one dad not watching his obviously not ready to go out yet son let his son shoot over my head so many times I had to threaten to call FWP to get them to stop. That being said, if you get away from everyone else, Freezeout has been some of the best waterfowling I've ever seen.
Good luck with the swan! Can't shoot them here on the Rea. It had two fly 10 yards over our heads last weekend and one had a red neck band. Pretty cool! When I was in highschool I had a swan permit and killed one at Freezeout. 5 mins later had a neck banded one fly right over too.
I think all the swans hanging around this area are trumpeters. Can't shoot them on the Rez so they are all just swans as far as I'm concerned :biggrin:
On the rez they are most certainly trumpeters and local ones at that. Its almost hard to hunt and not see them every day. Last year I had a family group of 5 decoy a small pond I was hunting. They flew literally 3' over my layout blind with their feet down. The breeze from their wingbeats moved the grass on my layout blind. They landed no more than 10' from my feet and swam around for 30 minutes or so, all 5 were neck banded, it was unreal. I believe these birds are a mountainous population that stays within MT and Idaho year round...I'm guessing some of them might go over to the Island Park/Ashton area in Idaho to spend the winter with some of those birds over there, but don't know for sure.
Since tundras breed above the Arctic Circle, I suspect all of the swans seen in MT this time of year are trumpeters. The neck bands are pretty rare on tundras; not so much on trumpeters. :wink:
What he said. Red is a trumpeter, but they also use other colors, yellow and green.
Blue and black are tundras.
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