SEVERANCE — All was quiet in the heart of Colorado’s goose-hunting country this frosty December morning. Too quiet.
A spread of decoys had been set just so. A mix of Big Foot full-bodies, a scattering of shells and some custom-made silhouettes, complete with a unique pivot system that would simulate the motion of actively feeding geese, was generally facing into a slight northwesterly breeze. Ten here, a dozen, maybe 15, there — by all appearances, the decoys suggested numerous flights of Canada geese having landed in a field of harvested corn for a morning of fine dining.
Hunters settled into a comfortable long pit among the decoys, tested its covers for ease of opening when incoming geese appeared and, with anticipation befitting the holiday season, began the wait.
“Be sure to keep a decoy just in front of you,” pit captain Arnie Perez admonished. “Otherwise they might catch the glare from your face and that can be a giveaway.
“Chances are, they’ll be coming in overhead and we’ll be shooting straight up at ’em. If they’re moving in from the side, be sure to stay within the shooting lane in front of you; don’t cross into someone else’s.”
Plenty of geese had moved in from the north, joining resident flocks already wise to the ways of hunters. With the harvest complete, the geese had their pick of corn and winter wheat, as well as the grass of golf courses and town parks. Some patches of ice were evident on the smaller ponds, but major waterways essentially were open. Conditions were almost perfect. Now where were they?
No flights landed in nearby fields, and on a dead-calm Saturday morning that should have been alive with hunting activity, virtually no shooting could be heard anywhere in the vicinity.
“We need a little wind, a little movement out in the decoys,” Perez noted. “These geese adjust very quickly. After they’ve approached a set of motionless decoys and been shot at, they quickly learn to avoid a spread that has no movement.”
Indeed, what little breeze that earlier was stirring had died down. Not even a shred of corn husk was waving in the air. The silhouette decoys stood stock-still. Conversations turned to the evolving patterns of Colorado geese and goose hunting.
Perez, a Commerce City resident and retired goose-hunting guide who has been pursuing geese since the late 1960s, has seen his share of changes.
“We’re still babes in the woods, compared to areas like the Chesapeake where they’ve been goose hunting for a couple of hundred years,” he said. “Some of the techniques that work in those areas that you read and hear about aren’t too effective here, but we’ve been developing our own style.”
Perez recalls using taxidermist-mount goose decoys early in his career, and silhouettes that were distinctively crafted in that era by John McNeese, a Denver-area bricklayer.
“You could always tell it was a John McNeese decoy just by looking at it,” he said. “He was very meticulous in the way he cut and painted them. That’s one of the reasons I still make mine the way that I do.”
Henryetta plastic-shell decoys — “Big time in their day,” Perez noted — appeared next, followed by Italian Replica full-body models and eventually the Big Foot version in the 1980s.
“When those came out, they set the waterfowl world on its ear,” Perez recalled. “That was the beginning of the modern era. Suddenly, everything else became old-fashioned.”
Motion among the decoys, beyond the now-common practice of flagging, appears to be a key element in their effectiveness.
“Somewhere, someone’s down in his basement right now, developing a walking decoy,” Perez said, somewhat wistfully. “That’ll be the next step.”
