Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Anyone live in Colorado Springs?

well good luck......and if yah need some place to park that AR incase you make a break for civilized society sometime in the future i could hold it for yah for safe keeping in my safe

If she is working at the Cheyenne Mtn Complex. I would be looking south on HWY115,towards Penrose, further south than FT Carson which borders it on the east

That area around Cheyenne Mountain is actually a very nice place to live. Good schools, too. That area is called Broadmoor Bluffs and is an extension from the Broadmoor neighborhood. I thought that installation was mothballed? With only a skeleton crew in place if they ever need to re-activate station?

Cheyenne Mountain is still active, but most of the "work" (as I've learned) is carried out at either Schriever or Peterson AFB. My kids go to the school District here in the SW side (District 12) and yep, it's excellent - they have homework *every* night ;-) !

Can a guy spot and stalk black bears with over the counter tags in Colorado on public land or is it all draw? My inlaws live in the 4 corners on the Utah side and I have hunted the La Salle mountains for elk and mule deer and always saw good numbers of black bear, but we were on the Utah side.

The last time I lived in the area, Fountain was north of COS, not south. It's up by Woodland Park off of Hwy 25 I believe it is. Of course, COS is about 5 times as big as it was when I was stationed there....I lived in a Duplex between Fountain and Woodland Park. Used to fish in Fountain creek which ran behind the place. Good Brookies and Brown trout fishing it were....

Frankly with the tax system, and the politics of CO these days with all the freakin Liberals .....I'd not ever move to CO again!

Are you thinking of Divide?

Wrong!

Yes don't you remember, around the same time they moved Pueblo from New Mexico.

I lived in Fountain for about two years and I always drove north to the Springs to work. I suppose they could have up and moved the whole town and no one told me though

Going west out of COS, you go thru Crystola, then Green Mountain Falls Before Woodland Park and then Divide is another ten miles west or so

Yep I mixed up Divide and Cascade for a moment there. I think he meant West not North.

Yep. sorry my bad, I was thinking of Fountain Creek as the name they gave our little crossroads at the time!

Hell that seems like so many years ago! LOL

One of my biggest regrets of when I lived in the area is that I never went to Conways Red Top for one of their big burgers. Everytime I went, they were always packed and couldn't get in! LOL

I moved to Colorado Springs in 1976 and the city has doubled in size since then.

Traffic has become a problem because the roadway system has not kept up with population growth (we have only one freeway) and drivers are ignorant regarding good driving egtiquette.

The political climate of Colorado Springs is generally conservative and it's a good place to raise a family. Although we live in Colorado which has a Democratic super-majority in the state goverment. They have recently passed restrictive gun legislation and are considering mandating government-run socialized medicine throughout the state.

Crime can be found in any major city and Colorado Springs is no exception but it seems to be concentrated in the southeast part of the city where there is a high percentage of ethnic minorities.

We have a clean environment (clean air, water, etc.) and easy access to lots of outdoor recreation opportunities. The climate is generally semi-arid although it seems like we live in a virtual desert because of the drought that has lasted off-and-on since the turn of the millenium.

It's still a buyers' real estate market but that is in transition. If you're going to buy a home, I would buy it soon before the market changes.

The economy is relatively stable because of the presence of lots of military facilities, which tend to level out economic swings. Unemployment is consistently slightly lower than the national average. Trade unions have little or no influence here. We have lots of clean high-tech industry amd virtually no heavy industry. Tourism, Federal government, light industry and agriculture are the major economic drivers.

We have our share of cultural activities (syphony, art museums, theaters, etc.) but there are more in Denver.

The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) has tripled in size since we have lived here and it is now a major, high quality, residential institution of higher learning. The strongest curriculum is probably engineering, which has been influenced by all the local high-tech industry. Colorado College is a four-year, private liberal arts college that specializes in high income students. There's also Pikes Peak Community College which is part of the state junior college system.

Elk hunting is Colorado's strongest hunting opportunity. The state still issues over the counter bull elk tags that are valid in about half of the game management units west of the Continental Divide. Each year I collect another preferennce point (I now have 16), a cow tag in the draw and I buy an OTC bull tag.

There are no OTC deer tags. I expect to get a deer tag every two or three years. Same goes for antelope.

Black bear tags are issued through the draw but there are enough that you can expect hunt them every year if you want to. Cougar tags are issued as OTC with a cap but there aren't many lion hunters and you can expect to get a tag if you want one. It's pretty difficult to hunt these species because there's a state law that makes baiting and the use of dogs illegal. That's another example of s a state that's politically controlled by left wing liberals in Denver, Boulder an Pueblo.

Moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and desert mule deer tags are issued through the draw and it takes three years just to get into the draw and then it takes lots of points beyond that to actually draw a tag for any of these species. However, it's concevable that you could hunt each species two or three times in your lifetime if you start collecting points when you are young.

I hunt pheasants every year but Colorado is not the best state to do that. Migratory bird hunting is pretty good on several of the eastern plains reservoirs.

KC

Good write up KC!

KC nailed it. The only other thing I'd point out about hunting is that if you want to play the game, you can normally buy leftover tags for the more common animals, so as an example, you could hunt antelope annually if desired and if you are not wedded to a particular area. That said, not a ton of public antelope areas, so you'd need to make some ranch contacts or learn about some of the programs that allow hunting on private land that DOW has gained access to.

As far as fishing...I basically gave up. Hard for me to get excited about the trout fishing after being spoiled with the fishing I experienced in Alaska.

All-in-all, Colo Springs is a good place to live.

That's like giving up women after you nail a supermodel. Hell man -- It's still fishin'...

Good stuff KC , appreciate the detailed response. What excites me more than anything is just getting some spaces to breathe, Taking a drive in the mountains, doing some predator hunting, backpack hunting, glassing big country, etc. I have felt like a caged animal ever since the move from Alaska to Texas. Paying $2,000 a year to hunt on my 200 of 14,000 acres gets old. I was in Cabelas the other day and I was thinking about all the cool chit I used to buy and use in my hobbies and thinking about how none of that stuff is even in my life anymore down here. I sit in a box and stare at a feeder and when said deer shows up.....I kill it. No experience, no time spent outdoors and no scenery. The missing ingredient is the medicinal stuff some guys need, and I am one of those guys. Anyway , enough of the mushy stuff. Fingers crossed and hopefully things pan out. The other cool thing is having family and friends in Utah that aren't but a 6 hr drive away, friends in Kansas to go bird hunt with, lots of opportunities abound.

You can still have your AR, just not a magazine larger than 15 boolits. I don't like it either.

Just for clarity , how is that Bill written? I was under the impression that you could have a mag with over 15 capacity as long as you had it before July 1st or something. I haven't really followed the bill up there completely, are they saying you have to turn in your 20 and 30 rd mags?

That is correct. You just can't buy one in Colorado now. You can go out of state and buy one though and bring it back