We were near Crook, Colorado, in a corn field that rolled away to the horizon in every direction as far as the eye could see. We’d spent the last two hours setting out nearly a thousand decoys in the dark, but legal shooting light was still a half-hour away when we settled in to wait for the first skeins of snow geese to arrive from the enormous flocks roosting on Jumbo Reservoir.
One of the more unique but seldom mentioned experiences of a waterfowl hunt on Colorado’s Eastern Plains lies in those few fleeting moments just after dawn when the rising sun creeps over the horizon transforming the world around you into a kaleidoscope of colors. It is so indescribably beautiful that all you can do is stare in disbelief at the magnificence of it all and pray that it lingers long enough for you to dig the camera out of your pack before it fades into the routine flatness of another winter day.
You can see large expanses of sky from the foothills and mountains, but nothing compares to the sensation of being completely enveloped by the overwhelming beauty and vastness of a prairie sky at daybreak unobstructed by mountains, trees, or structures. We sat there, spellbound, while the intense orange, red, and gold streaks melted away, and morning bloomed soft and blue around us. Then suddenly, our dogs began quivering and whining with nervous excitement, and we could hear the telltale squawking of snow geese on the wing far in the distance.
What you hope for at this point is that the birds will work your decoys, you’ll shoot straight, and the dogs will have the time of their lives racing each other across the field to retrieve and deliver birds to you, their butts and tails wagging so hard you marvel that their spines don’t snap.
Because the North American snow goose populations are so dangerously high they threaten to destroy their ancestral breeding grounds, game department managers have lifted bag limits and reduced shooting restrictions nationwide. On those golden days when all goes well and the shooting is good, you can collect dozens of birds in an hour or two.
Of course, it doesn’t always go that way. Snow geese are notoriously smart. They know there’s safety in numbers, so they travel in huge flocks — 500 to 700 or more at one time is common. They are also skittish to a fault. If there is anything doubtful about your decoy spread or they spot suspicious behavior and out-of-place movement on the ground, they will vanish like smoke before they get within shotgun range. It’s possible on some days to actually see thousands of snow geese, decoy only a few, and shoot none.
Regardless, if you’re lucky enough to witness a glorious sunrise in snow goose country, your life will have been forever blessed.
Dennis Smith is a freelance outdoors writer and photographer whose work appears nationally. He lives in Loveland.
