Orchard – An owl’s hoot drifted down from a cottonwood whose gnarled branches stood etched against the sky as stark as an Aztec emblem. Across the river to the southeast, growing light framed the deep, fluid wingbeats of a bald eagle scanning the river for breakfast. A wounded duck, perhaps? A carp struggling in the current?
Earlier, we also heard geese honking nervously from a midstream sand spit at our clumsy approach beneath bags of decoys.
The geese departed shrilly in the half-darkness and neither they nor any of their friends returned after Mark Keeler and Brian Olsen waded out to set decoys at the spot where the birds left webbed prints and droppings from their night’s repose.
At sunrise, a flock of bobolink chattered across the sky, wings catching the light, then scattering like sparks from a flame. When these prairie birds were gone, a lone coyote strolled briefly along the shore, plunged in and swam to the other side, nose tilted above the flow.
But at a time when surveys speak of ample numbers of ducks in the region, no flocks appeared on this stretch of the South Platte where dark waters form quiet sanctuary around braids of islands.
We knew the reasons even before we arrived: A dashboard thermometer blinked 37 degrees; even the wind that scoured the countryside in recent weeks had gone still.
“I can’t believe I’m hunting ducks without gloves in January and my hands aren’t cold,” Keeler said, scanning a river showing not a glint of snow or ice.
Things had been different not many days ago, when severe cold and wind sent birds scurrying from the several reservoirs in the region toward the river, the only open-water asylum available. For two weeks, perhaps three, hunters told stories of great duck shoots that sounded like the grand old times of yesteryear.
Indeed, the earliest migration pattern in recent years had caused large numbers of ducks and geese to congregate in northeast Colorado. But what came next largely has been a repeat of a pattern that serves to confound and confuse hunters, public and private, who look to the Platte for their sport.
Freeze up the reservoirs, toss in a bit of wind, and you’ve got birds teeming along the open river and sloughs. When the weather turns warm and the big impoundments again become available, waterfowl flee hunting pressure along the river.
The Colorado Division of Wildlife in the autumn of 2004 began a survey to determine the true extent to which this pattern occurs, with a special eye toward the influence of hunting in state wildlife areas. DOW crews fly the river from Greeley to the Nebraska border every two weeks to compile an analysis of seasonal trends and as a subsequent comparison to other seasons.
Consistently, the counts indicate a proclivity for both ducks and geese to concentrate on the reservoirs when weather allows it.
In the most obvious, and painful, reflection of this science, four Denver-area hunters huddled in a blind only inches from the river watching a sky that grew progressively blue and empty.
At some point in the proceedings, a lone mallard drake appeared a couple hundred yards downstream, circled twice, nodded a bright green head knowingly in our direction and presumably took off for parts where people weren’t toting guns.
Gary Ellis of Parker told of similar hit-and-miss experiences recently on family property back in his native Nebraska near Lake McConaughy, where geese fly right one day, but not the next.
“That’s the way it is with waterfowl hunting,” Ellis said with the wisdom of experience.
The good old times might still come, but not nearly every day.
Listen to Charlie Meyers at 9 a.m. each Saturday on “The Fan Outdoors,” radio KKFN 950 AM. He can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
