Parachute – For both the large and small of it, the clock is ticking on hunting hopes in this sprawling canyon country that at once holds a nation’s dreams and nightmares.
The clock’s big hand sweeps across a Colorado hunting season that, well past the halfway mark, can only be described as odd. In a place noted for impressive herds, success has been sporadic at best, disappointing at worst.
The little hand, the one that keeps more extended time in a region where the eternal impacts of geology are causing instant upheaval, tells us that things never will be the same.
Amid the clamor of gas exploration and the growing sounds of gates slamming shut, hunters make the best of what steadily becomes a more limited opportunity.
The animals still are here, roaming through a tangle of aspen and sagebrush and across canyons that stretch as far as the eye can see.
“Deer numbers aren’t as good as we might hope, but we’ve got a lot of elk in this country,” says JT Romatzke, district wildlife manager with the Colorado Division of Wildlife.
Romatzke’s sprawling territory stretches from Roan Creek on the west to Colorado 13 on the east, then dips south of Interstate 70 to encompass the vaulting expanse of Battlement Mesa. It contains some of the best game range in the state, but that’s just part of the issue here.
The Roan Plateau, until recently a mere speck on the map, holds one of the continent’s largest reserves of natural gas, along with massive deposits of oil shale – sweet elixir to a nation starved for energy.
How to balance extraction with wildlife and other natural values is the question that confounds energy officials and natural resource managers alike. The conundrum looms largest where the majestic Roan Cliffs lunge up from the valleys formed by the Colorado River and its tributaries.
On a Sunday tour with Romatzke to contact hunters in the area, a writer was startled both at the extent of current drilling and at the prospect for far more intensive exploration in the near future. Drill pads and a labyrinth of connecting roads have become the dominant topographical features across hundreds of thousands of acres controlled by energy giants such as Exxon, Shell and EnCana. These firms own vast tracts outright and, except for controls imposed by best management practices, can drill where they please.
The hot-button issue is whether drilling should be allowed on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management and, if so, in which configuration. BLM is scheduled to release an environmental impact statement regarding 70,000 acres on the Roan Plateau early next year. Wildlife officials fear a negative impact on a game-rich area favored by hunters, along with water quality concerns centered on a native trout recovery site.
Such repercussions pale in comparison to the potential effect of shale mining. This industry, pushed into the background by production cost, increasingly creeps into the conversation of energy officials with the recent surge in fuel prices.
Shale plays indirectly into another Roan Plateau affair, that of public access to roughly 20,000 acres known collectively as the “Girl Claims” because the separate parcels were given female names when patented early in the last century. A 1986 court decision awarded the public a 20-year access window. EnCana Corp., Canada’s largest oil company and owner of the claims, recently posted signs stating it will close the parcel to hunting in August 2006.
A major concern is whether EnCana thus will choose to block the so-called Cow Creek Road that provides the only effective access to the BLM public lands or, on a strictly legal point, whether Colorado law regarding adverse possession prevails in keeping the road open. So it goes with the future of outdoor recreation on the Roan Plateau.
Back on the clock’s little hand, the current big game hunt has its own particular trials.
“The harvest is slow this year,” Romatzke said of a situation exacerbated both by the fact that deer herds are 33 percent below DOW’s desires and, of course, uncommonly warm weather. “Elk are scattered all over. We need some weather to bunch them up for the hunters.”
As Romatzke speaks, a brisk wind and 50-degree temperature forms a blowtorch to singe the 6 inches of snow that fell the day before. Dust trails mark processions of hunters, most of whom conduct their search from vehicles.
It seems significant that the lone camp displaying elk – two bulls and two cows – features hunters who pursue game on foot. More certain is that plenty of critters will remain when the fourth and final hunt segment begins Nov. 16. But the clock keeps moving. Time is running low.
Listen to Charlie Meyers at 9 a.m. each Saturday on “The Fan Outdoors,” KKFN 950 AM. He can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
