Windsor
So what do the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy and last Saturday’s opening of the eastern Colorado goose season have in common?
Both are fueled by media hype and a frenzy of anticipation, coupled with certain financial incentives that make these risky events hard to resist.
On one hand, we find shoppers lined up before dawn with fists full of coupons and half-off advertisements, noses pressed against department-store doors awaiting the hand-to-hand combat soon to follow.
On the other, goose hunters eagerly await the sunrise and an opportunity to exercise their investment in decoys and expensive leases.
The bottom line from this joint exercise in frustration is that shoppers generally filled their carts with goodies of some sort. Most goose hunters did not.
All across the primary hunting grounds north and east of Denver, the complaint was much the same: lots of lesser Canada geese flying around, but few close enough to shoot. Welcome to the concept of opening day as cursed.
Stuffed with leftover turkey and pent-up enthusiasm, few hunters are able to resist the siren call of a season opener. No matter that the weather is more suited for gardening than geese or that everyone with a gun and a place to shoot it is out there, too. It’s just, well, what you have to do.
Trouble arrived early at a pit east of Windsor where Eric Coe and Jed Prendergast prepared a delicious spread of 10 dozen Big Foot decoys. Positioned strategically in a field of cut corn, the veteran hunters watched eagerly as the first wedge of birds sped straight for the set … and kept right on flying.
The same pattern was repeated by the next flight, and the next. Over the next four hours, thousands of geese passed within hailing distance of the pit. With Coe tooting the call and Prendergast flapping a flag in a carefully orchestrated drum-and-bugle corps duet, only two small flocks made the slightest pretense of paying attention.
Not once did anyone breathe the magic words, “Get ready,” in preparation to shoot. Nobody so much as touched his gun.
“They’re making us work,” Coe said between puffs on his calls. “My throat’s getting sore.”
“My arm’s tired,” Prendergast added.
With geese spinning everywhere beneath an azure sky, it didn’t take long to recognize the problem. All these thousands of geese were lesser Canadas, notoriously difficult to decoy.
As the fruitless soprano chorus continued overhead, frustration grew inside the pit.
“I don’t mind calling a lot if I get to pull the trigger every once in a while,” Coe said. “You’d think these little birds would get tired of flying around after a while.”
Size matters, at least in the world of goose hunting. The simple facts are these: Greater Canadas, which travel in smaller groups and establish predictable feeding patterns, are easier to hunt. Also, better to eat.
The absence of big birds spoke volumes for the second dilemma, which was weather. With the thermometer nudging past 50 degrees, the climate simply was too nice for hunting geese – a situation that echoed a greater annoyance far to the north.
Comforted by yet another mild autumn, the bulk of the flight birds remained on the prairies of southern Canada or detained in transit in eastern Montana and the Dakotas. The smaller geese that increasingly call northeast Colorado their winter home typically migrate early, whether the weather. It requires real weather misery – snow, wind and cold – to bring the big birds down.
Happily, that may not take long. The most severe weather system of the season has swept across the prairie: below-zero readings in Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg, with more of the same in Bismarck and Billings.
If the pattern holds, flights of larger geese and plump mallards should descend upon eastern Colorado to spark the season, with plenty of shopping days left before Christmas.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
