By Dennis Smith
Nothing quite gets the outdoor blood pumping like the month of September, especially here in Colorado. The chilled morning air is heavy with the heady scent of autumn, stirring hunters, anglers, hikers, bird-watchers, leaf-peepers and outdoor lovers of all types. They have visions of fiery-gold aspens blanketing the flanks of our snow-dusted peaks, bull moose feeding in the willows on Cameron Pass and mule deer bucks chasing does on the sage flats near Craig and Meeker, and listen for the primal call of rutting bull elk bugling from high-mountain meadows all across the state.
Brook and brown trout in their blazing fall colors rise eagerly to dry flies on cooling backcountry creeks or chase big, garishly-colored streamers across the spawning shoals of the Delaney Buttes Lakes in North Park and other high-mountain reservoirs. Dusky grouse hunters and their bird dogs will work the wildflower meadows and grassy glades in the transition zones between aspen groves and spruce forests where these upland birds forage for grasshoppers and beetles or peck the dried seed heads of frost-killed wildflowers. September is a magical time in the wild.
But the action isn’t just in the mountains — up and down the Front Range, Canada geese and their young, now fully fledged, wing their way to harvested crop fields to feed on freshly spilled wheat and corn, and sandhill cranes begin staging in great migrating flocks along the Yampa and San Luis valleys in preparation for the long flight south. Whitetail deer mingle with gathering flocks of Rio Grande turkeys on the river bottoms of the North and South Platte, and the Arkansas and Republican rivers. Green- and blue-winged teal congregate on farm ponds and random prairie potholes — almost anywhere they can find shallow water, water weeds and solitude. Kettles (or large flocks) of Swainson’s hawks, turkey vultures, broad-winged hawks and Mississippi kites form flocks numbering in the thousands, creating a virtual river of migrating birds. Rufous hummingbirds and cinnamon teal add to the magic of Colorado’s fall migrations.
The Colorado dove season opens September 1 and the majority of hunters will concentrate their efforts on farmsteads, back road sunflower patches, abandoned gravel pits and watering holes bordering prairie grain fields. Archery deer, elk and antelope seasons are already open in some game management units; rifle seasons will soon follow.
Maybe, though, nothing says September in Colorado like the annual high-country spectacle of the elk rut and the unusual opportunity to observe this iconic event up close — sometimes for weeks on end — in Rocky Mountain National Park. While many of us dearly love to hunt them with rifle or bow in the appropriate seasons, I can’t imagine a September that didn’t include several trips to Rocky with a camera for the chance to photograph the great herds and maybe even capture the image of a truly large trophy bull. I suspect I’m not the only one.