The air of optimism pervading the start of the 2011-12 waterfowl season no longer lingers in most of Colorado’s traditional hunting grounds. And with only a week remaining in a season considered average at best, duck hunters in particular are hoping for a change of fortune.
Skiers haven’t been the only ones to suffer through Colorado’s mild winter to date, as waterfowl hunters have found themselves staring longingly to the north for signs of both birds and the snows that drive them southward. There’s a reason it’s called fowl weather, after all.
“There are two main things that the weather has hurt us on,” said Jim Gammonly, waterfowl biologist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. “One is that even as late as a couple of weeks ago, there were still tens of thousands of Canada geese and ducks — mainly mallards — well north of us. Places like Montana have not had much of a winter either.
“The other is the weather here. We haven’t had a lot of cold weather, so even if we had a lot of birds around, they’d be harder to get to because there are so many places for them to get away from the gun. So I expect the harvest data will be pretty spotty and probably pretty slow this last month or so.”
While it may feel like there are more hunters than birds circling the blind this season, Gammonly notes that CPW flyovers have found an average number of ducks. Problem is, they have been distributed in places where most people can’t get to them.
“The birds are out there. But with so many places for them to go, I think the hunting is kind of tough,” he said. “There may be a little last hurrah for this last week of ducks, but I don’t see much.”
Still, for dedicated waterfowlers, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel.
That light arrives in the form of snow geese and Ross’ geese, the light-colored geese that will begin their reverse migration northward after the calendar flips to February. The season for both light geese and the darker-colored Canada geese extends through Feb. 12, followed by a light goose conservation order season east of Interstate 25 that lifts an already liberal bag limit of 20 birds until its close at the end of April.
“Texas has gotten a lot wetter this winter, so I think a lot of geese are down there taking advantage of those habitats. But they will start moving north like they always do, maybe a little earlier than normal with this mild weather,” Gammonly said. “Hopefully, Colorado will have a good season. We need to harvest as many of those birds as we can.”
Light geese have earned the distinction of North America’s most wanted species in the past decade, due to the intrusive nature of the colonial birds and the devastating impacts their massive flocks have on habitat.
Scientists across North America agree that populations of light geese have become so numerous that their fragile tundra nesting habitats cannot adequately support them. In addition, greater snow geese are degrading natural habitats and causing agricultural damage on migration areas. In other words, light geese are literally eating themselves out of house and home.
“They’re such big grazers that they denude the vegetation,” Gammonly said. “They continue to just eat up the arctic breeding areas that they go to. All the species that rely on tundra habitat have seen big changes, so there’s a lot of concern.”
After years of liberalized hunting regulations, scientists now realize they have vastly underestimated light goose populations. Current estimates place the breeding population somewhere north of 10 million, and rising.
As a result, hunters are encouraged to harvest as many of the birds as possible.
“It’s insane. The white goose numbers have just been climbing for years,” said Jeff Colwell of Front Range Guide Service in Windsor. “In an effort to keep those numbers in check, they’ve extended the spring season with no plugs and no limit. Just shoot as many of them as you can.”
Still, it’s a task easier said than done.
“They’re hard to hunt. They get smart really fast and they move in these big groups,” Gammonly said. “But Colorado is … one of the only Western states in the Central Flyway that has a significant harvest of light geese.”
