WINDSOR — So it begins again, this hurtling along dark highways, always hurrying, in directions north and east toward a meeting with waterfowl that might not happen at all.
Along the way, a duck hunter plays leapfrog with semis, runs slalom through highway repairs, munches stale pastry, slurps coffee. Lots of coffee. Always late. Ever in a hurry.
The destination is a small pond north of Windsor, where Dennis Smith of Loveland has gathered with his grown sons, David and Derek, in what may be the most harmonious blind in these parts.
They share a common desire, to greet the opening of another duck season in the company of enough early migrating ducks — wigeon and gadwall, along with a few teal lingering in shirt-sleeve weather — to make this crazy exercise seem worthwhile. If a few stray mallards, homebred on the many lakes and ponds that dot the upper Front Range, happen to wander by, so much the better.
This pond reposes between fields of tall corn, still green and tassled in a season when the calendar and reality refuse to jibe. Following a pattern set by a chilly spring, everything has been late this year.
From bugs to bugles, nearly everything has lagged behind schedule, causing big game hunters to wonder if their hunting timetables will be knocked off-kilter when the season begins in short days. A pheasant hunter now dressed in duck camo wonders if cornfields like these still will be standing when that season starts in early November.
For now, the worry is about waterfowl. We hear reports that many northern mallards and geese are lingering well north of the Canadian prairie country. We fret over the delicate early-season balance point that causes these midsized migratory ducks to swoop southward in pulses pegged to weather and unfathomable urges we’ll never understand.
Such uncertainty prompted Jeff Colwell to purchase a gadwall call to cover every conceivable eventuality. Almost no hunter carries a gadwall call in his tool box, but the fact that he has it appears to give him some measure of comfort.
Colwell also has laid out a decoy spread dominated by these early ducks, with only a couple of mallards.
“About all you see this time of year are brown ducks,” he said. “I think a lot of mallard drake decoys make the other ducks nervous.”
A veteran of many winters in the blind, Colwell operates Front Range Guide Service for both ducks and geese (970-219-3913). On this pond, he has achieved a marvel of duck blind architecture, a spacious affair perched just above the water with solid wood floors and just the right provisions for sitting or shooting.
Concealed by natural camouflage, it is tucked beneath the branches of a tall Russian olive tree, a shadowy arrangement that causes hunters to become invisible until late morning. A dry outside compartment contains a young Labrador retriever named Max, who takes his ease in concealed comfort until called to work.
But for even this arrangement to work, there must be ducks, and weather. Local weather forecasters, in their penchant for drama, had mentioned a likelihood of wind. But we all know what happens with such forecasts. Not one ripple appears on the pond and, except for a pair that paddles around with their own motors, the decoys lie dead in the water.
A few ducks appear now and again, interspersed by a bald eagle that bores in from the west on long, slow wing beats, straight for the blind. Shooting is sparse and most ducks fly high, with little weather incentive to come down to play.
By that modern marvel, the cellphone, Colwell converses in real time with hunters in other blinds around the area. The report is universally the same.
“I’m ready to see some migratory birds,” Colwell says, hanging up the phone.
So are we all.
