204Ruger

I've seen a few around where I live but in city limits. A friend lives over in the Twin Falls area. He's been seeing quite a few along the roads around there. Seems a little early but we did have a fairly mild winter here. We've had quite a bit of rain and it's a muddy mess out in the hills. Seeing those chucks though gets me fired up an wanting to get after them. I've got a new to me .17 Remington I'm anxious to try on them.

In some areas they will start showing in Feb/March depending on weather and temps. Right now my area is still cold, wet and even snow covered so it may well be into late March before I see any poking their heads out. But I am ready to see some.
Hope you can find some earlier and begin having fun.

Chucks, yeah, waiting here too. Snowing right now, got about 8" on the ground even after a brief warmup over the past two days that melted a lot of it. Like Bill K., at least for us here, we'll not see those boys until all this melts and we get some warmer temps and some sun. I usually don't shoot them till early May to give the young chucks a chance to get weaned from mom and get some decent size. Every time I've shot a young juvenile chuck and retrieved it, I'm bummed when I see it's just a young pup.

But my rifles are ready, loads all done, just waiting for the conditions to improve and the 'kids' to get comfy in their surroundings while putting on some weight....not hard for rock chucks with their appetite. It's worth the wait, plus the young ones breed too, so we always leave some for seed.

What we'll be looking for:



What we will see when we do see them:



Now it's just a matter of time, and cooperation from our nemesis, Mother Nature.

We are also in the "wait and see" mode in SW MT at the moment. Mother Nature provided another marginal fluffy white contribution to the water table overnight and judging by the surrounding drainages she has a long way to go to reach anything close to "normal" as the average snow water equivalent percentages in the northern Rockies still range from a low of 45% to a high of 64%. No need to panic yet as several back-to-back heavy wet spring snows can make up ground in a hurry, but the clock is ticking...

I have yet to see the first robin of the year not to mention any furry four-legged creatures peeking out. No doubt still enjoying the last remnants of the long winters nap.

Had a nice thrill earlier this afternoon. Took the Jeep and then the Dodge down to fuel them up and there are three rock outcroppings I always check out for rock chucks. Well two of the three had one to two chucks out sunning themselves, so the is a good sign for my area. However these rock areas are in location that you really can not shoot at, homes and businesses to close, but it is a good indicator of them starting to show up.
So now in a few more weeks I will check some of my shooting areas, if the snow stays away and it keeps warming up.