Colt’s Combat Commander

You don’t need to strap on a handgun to hunt birds but they sure are useful for dispatching porcupines or other vermin encountered in the field.  Sometimes hauling the extra weight in the field isn’t worth the trouble, but it is fun to pack some heat if you want to. We should enjoy that while this is still the good old United States of America.

The enduring Colt’s Model 1911 is one of the favorites. This configuration is the Combat Commander, just a bit shorter than the standard Government’s model. A beautifully made gun.

NO SHO . . . . G IN . . . . A . . A

Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership

Mia reached out to the Birdhunter and asked that I put this on the site. The TRCP looks to be a terrific pro-hunting conservation group. Check it out . . .

Texas Turkey

Rio Grande tom taken with a .223 sporting rifle.

Why Google Sucks

A company that bolts a camera on top of a car  and drives up and down pretty much every road in the county so we can have super cool mapping with curbside views would normally get my vote as a company that doesn’t suck.

But on Easter Sunday this is the Google landing page . . .

They chose to recognize the birthday of Cesar Chavez instead of  the resurrection of Christ. I am sure Cesar was a great guy but holy cow, are you kidding me?

Hello Bing!

Mouthful of Chukar

6 month old Roux – Pretty Dog!

Hunting at The Bluffs, Colorado – Part 2

Here are the rest of the pictures from our hunt at The Bluffs. Be sure to check out “Part 1” as well.

The small Shorthair is a 6 month old bitch named Roux (pronounced [roo]). This is one of the puppies from the earlier post “Cajun-German Shorthaired Pointer Pups Available” where you can see her as a newborn pup. This was her first time hunting and she was astoundingly good!

Hunting at The Bluffs, Colorado – Part 1

About an hour east of Denver, The Bluffs is one of the Colorado’s premier hunting preserves. Birds are not ordered and planted for hunts but instead the club manages and augments sustainable populations of game birds such as Pheasants, Quail, Chukar and Hungarian Partridge. The limited membership hunt on 4,000 acres for birds that seem for the most part pretty wild. I think this is as close as you can get to a wild bird hunt without going on a wild bird hunt. We recently spent a full day hunting The Bluffs and here are the pictures. To keep this from being too big I have split this into two posts so be sure to check out “Part 2“.

Filson Sportsman’s Bag

For the bird hunter, a good bag is one of the essentials. To carry all the junk you need for a hunt or a day at the gun club, the Filson Sportsman’s Bag is hard to beat. It has been on my list for quite some time but at $295 it was just too expensive. Now that I have one (received as a gift from Mrs. Birdhunter!) I almost would pay that much . . . almost. I think a price point of half that amount would be about right. Despite the expense, it is a terrific bag.

Turnbull’s Rust Blue

On our last hunting trip, the Armas Garbi was tossed into the truck by a weary (lazy) hunter producing a handsome scratch on the right barrel. In addition to this new scratch, there had been a decade of sweaty hands, random splatters of dove blood and unkind encounters with brush, fences and trucks.  It was time to have the barrels refinished so I sent them to Turnbull Mfg Co. in Bloomfield, NY for rust bluing. These guys are not cheap, maybe the most expensive, but they are well known for their high quality gun finishes. This was one time that the extra expense paid off. They came back as near perfect as I could have hoped for. In fact, this finish looks better than what came on the gun new, in my opinion. Check it out below. I am sorry that I did not take some “before” pictures.