Opening Day of Spring Season in Aurora

Opening day of spring season in Aurora. Just the sound of it makes me smile. PCS was again kind enough to provide us with an area this spring and the first day hunters anxiously arrived in the parking lot with high hopes for the day. The temp was reasonable, but there was no sun and a bit of a stiff wind that made it 'crisp. There had been a lot of rain which was not what we hoped for this time ironically enough. My 'insiders' told me to hope for drought the week before the hunt, and it didn't work out that way. The area is full of prime yorktown and what I heard is that as the mining area is moving across the old road, we will see more yorktown. The was a ton of mud in the area many of us ended up with mud on our shins as we stepped in areas that were quite squishy and watched our boots disappear. The morning started out slowly for me and PaleoBoy. Neither of us was finding much at all and we were both confused - we were finding perfect hunting spots but there was not the teeth there as we expected. We started to conclude that the area is just so fresh, it needs time to weather out material. We did find a ton of whale material, but they apparently all died of natural causes because no teeth were surrounding them that we found. I dug up a very large vert, but it was so muddy I decided not to carry it back with me. We had no sun to help us, and with everything so wet, the teeth were hard to come by. Every tooth I found before about 11am (and that was not many) was very dark colored because it was so waterlogged. The sun finally came out though and the wind kicked up pretty heavy and stated to dry out some of the surface teeth. Paleoboy and I each had 'shamers' around noon - mine was a just sub-3 inch chubby that was unfortuately on half-off special; his was the tip poking out that made him prepare the celebration dance only to find that it was *only* a tip and put the dance on hold. Anyone that hunts aurora with me knows I really like the cuvier (modern tigers) teeth and I have been in a drought of them lately. I got one nice real one this trip, it will end up in the dentition Paleoboy is putting together for me. The area has a TON of promise and as it weathers, it will no doubt produce a lot of big megs and other great finds. I saw a fantastic 6 and three eighths meg come out, and it was good that it was found by someone that puts a lot of time in at the museum volunteering. I saw a few other real nice teeth too, with a special congrats to Bonnie again for a large bramble shark to continue her streak of great finds without breaking a sweat. I have to learn that technique. Also a special congrats to Rivrdigr - go see his post on his saturday GMR hunt for details - amazing. The biggest mako in the pic is 2 and 7 8ths since I was too dumb to include any scale.