Claybird, I'm going to throw something at you out of left field.
Artesia, New Mexico. Why Artesia? In short, Cottonwood Gun Club. It's a put-and-take pheasant hunting club. Birds are released on our 4,000 acre club every Friday evening from the first weekend of October through the middle of January or until the birds run out, whicher is later.
You get tags for 15 birds for $175; if you use them up, you can always get more. I typically hunt Saturday mornings for 3-4 hours, take 1-3 birds, get them cleaned by lunch time, and still have the afternoon for whatever, but you can hunt as much or as little as you like. A guy got a membership as a Christmas present at the beginning of December, and he filled his tags by the end of the month! He bought another membership and another 15 tags.
Yes, you can hunt Oct/Nov/Dec/Jan for $175; it's a private club and no license is required.
And, you can hunt by yourself with your dog(s); I often do. You don't need 8-12 guys like you do for those big open fields in Kansas/OK/etc.
Plus, the first few days of dove season are killer! There is a great abundance of Eurasian Collared Dove here, and they don't count against your limit (15 Mourning/White Wing combined). I've seen guys kill 70 dove and not hit their limit. Eurasians are invaders, and we need to try to keep their numbers down, but they are still game birds and should be treated so (taken cleanly and consumed).
Housing in Artesia is a bit on the high side (for the area); Roswell and Carlsbad are both less expensive, and both less than an hour away from the Club, an Roswell has both skeet and trap clubs just out of town.
If this sounds appealing, please feel free to PM me for further discussion. I'm sure we can arrange for you to join me as my guest on opening weekend this year to see how you like it, if you're interested.
Last edited by BPGuy; 03/14/12 03:21 PM.
