During our pre season scouting in March we noticed that our area had almost perfect water levels, and so we anticipated great things for this season.
We had a nice a cool late summer that eased its way into the cold fronts that arrived in the early fall. We began with far more preferable conditions to previous years, when we started the season with warmer weather and plenty of rain.
Great concentration of local teal especially Speckled Teal opened the season for us. Those early cold fronts pushed pintails from the south into us as well. These two factors made a great early season for our duckhunting. Slowly during May and early June we started to see the much sought after and famous Rosy bills (our version of Mallards) and our guest enjoyed epic hunts with a combination of low and fast teal and classic decoyed birds with the pintails and Rosys.
In July we had maybe the biggest concentration of Rosys we ever seen in our area. They showed up after a big storm that put a lot of fresh water on the ground and moved birds from further north. We took full advantage of this gift from the weatherman and the Duck Gods.
Without doubt the highlight of this season was the new dove roost we started shooting this season. After a year of scouting and heavy work on make it accesible with new roads and bridges, we managed to access to this amazing dove shooting heaven and we secured a long term lease with the ranch owners. Our guns were shooting an average of 15 boxes in the afternoons with some guys burning 30 and 40 boxes— one 16 old youngster shot 60 boxes in two hours…. an all time record for Los Crestones. These are Córdoba dove shooting levels !
Our Perdiz hunts this season were good with an average of 20 flushes per outing of 2 guns. This is our best upland sporting bird and enjoying a good walk throught fertile grassland, watching a good pointer work is one of the nicest things a bird hunter can do in Argentina. The bird explosive flush and fast flight makes a great sport. Pigeon hunting is always an option in Crestones, it is not a big volume shoot like other more famous destinations, but is a great way to spend an
Pigeon hunting is always an option in Crestones, it is not a big volume shoot like other more famous destinations, but is a great way to spend an afteroon shooting 15 to 20 birds per gun. We prepare the hunts as traditional decoyed pigeon shoots or present high passing birds. Our European guns are usually very keen for the latter style of hunting.
This year we started to hunt pigeons on the property that the lodge is located on, so walking distance hunts are an option now at Crestones.
Our Big Game hunts were great as always, thanks to some of the best wild/free range Black Buck and Axis deer resources in the world. This year we added a super fun hunt that is wild boar on horseback with leveraction guns and revolvers. Some horse and riding skills are required for this type of venture but we also can arrange stop and stalk boar hunts with scoped high power rifles.
For 2017 season will have also the oportunity to hunt free rage Water buffalo not very far from Crestones.
We fare happy to have finished another successful season and it was a good one! Our guests left happy with great memories to share, and nothing makes us happier than to know this.
– Sebastian Casado & Ariel Miranda, Los Crestones Lodge
