The put-in is on the northwest side of Timberline Road right along the Poudre River Trail. There is one dam you have to portage just south of the crossing at east Prospect Road. To get around the dam, pull out just above it on the left hand side of the river and drag around. The second place you have to get out of your boat is at the top of the Environmental Learning Center (ELC) just past the broken dam near the water treatment plant. The rest of the run is free flowing and an easy paddle. You'll know it's time to get out when you cross under the railroad bridge (take the far right trestle opening) and see the burned out remains of the Old Strauss Cabin on your right about a half mile down stream from the bridge.
A few weeks ago the kids and I capped off a weekend of outdoor activities by doing "The Town Run" (or at least our variation of it) on the Poudre River. We enjoy paddling a 4.5 mile stretch of the river from Timberline just south of Mulberry down to Strauss Cabin Road not to far from our house. We each have our own modes of river transport including Megan in her rodeo kayak, Lucas on his sit on top kayak, and me on my inflatable SHUBU SUP. Below are some highlights form our trip. We had hoped for a little more water on this run but they must have been taking water out upstream. The day before the water was double this volume but that's paddling in a heavily irrigated river way. This level (about 450 CFS) is about as low as you want to paddle on the Poudre River, otherwise you end up walking a lot. Getting there
The put-in is on the northwest side of Timberline Road right along the Poudre River Trail. There is one dam you have to portage just south of the crossing at east Prospect Road. To get around the dam, pull out just above it on the left hand side of the river and drag around. The second place you have to get out of your boat is at the top of the Environmental Learning Center (ELC) just past the broken dam near the water treatment plant. The rest of the run is free flowing and an easy paddle. You'll know it's time to get out when you cross under the railroad bridge (take the far right trestle opening) and see the burned out remains of the Old Strauss Cabin on your right about a half mile down stream from the bridge.
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Today I headed back over to the South Platte River to enjoy a bit longer floating bird hunt. I put my canoe in at the bridge at County Road 61 and took out about ~6-miles downstream at County Road 50 to avoid the upstream paddle I did last week. There is a decent dirt road between the two points, with very little traffic, and so it makes for a really safe, quick, and convenient portage. I began the paddle at daybreak and was pleasantly surprised to find the temperature in the mid-twenties as opposed to the single digits like last week. There was no ice in the water and everything seemed to be much more comfortable than before. Regulation makes the world go round – I am so glad I checked before I went So if you hunt in Colorado, or other places I suppose, you know how complicated hunting regulations can be. These rules are necessary to protect the wildlife resource but also because they make hunting safe, fair, and in busy areas, protect the experience of wilderness. However, the rules for each area are oftentimes different and can include restrictions regarding the hours of access, how and when you can get to water (if applicable), the days you are allowed to be on the property, what kind of game can be hunted throughout the seasons, and even what kind of firearm is legal for that area. I’ve always been a pretty careful person and with this new hobby have done my best to educate myself before heading out into the field. Honestly speaking however, the rules in Colorado are so complex that they even confuse the wildlife managers who run the properties. I have boated on the Platte River for years and so am very familiar with put-in and take-out politics with landowners but thankfully had just recently double checked the access restrictions for where I was hunting today and it kept me out of certain trouble This stretch of the river runs about 4-miles through the Centennial Valley State Wildlife Area, and if you have a reservation to hunt in the SWA, you can be actively hunting the entire stretch. However, if you don’t have a reservation, keep your gun in the boat while you enjoy the float through the SWA, and feel free to hunt the first and last 1.5 miles that take you through private land. Just make sure your ducks hit the water and shoot only from the boat. You cannot shoot from sandbars or you’ll be running the risk of trespassing while hunting which carries a big penalty on your license. The only catch-22 here is that if your bird lands on a sandbar or the side of the river, and you get out of the water to retrieve it, you are trespassing. In Colorado the landowner does not own the water but they do own the land underneath, so getting out of the boat to retrieve a downed bird (required by the state) puts you into a gray area with the law. I choose to believe that as long as I am not actively hunting on the landowner’s sandbar or property that I am ok to retrieve a lost bird, but that’s not the letter of the law. Additionally, during duck season you cannot put a boat in on the SWA property, only upstream or downstream. The dams – more gray area in the law The only issue on this particular stretch of river is that there are two modern weir dams just downstream from the put-in, the first about a half mile down and the second about a mile farther down, about 100 yards upstream of the SWA. Sometimes we get lucky, and the ditch company is not pulling water out of the river, and so we can float right over the lowered gates. However, when they are pulling water and the gates are up, you must portage the dams for safety. The first dam should be portage from the left (North side) of the river and the second dam should be portaged to the right (South side) of the river. It is important to do this because I feel each of the sides mentioned are far safer than the other shores and because it keeps you off any of the ditch companies equipment or more “physical” property. Technically when you portage a weir/dam you are trespassing, regardless of the fact that “they” stuck the weir across the public river. Once again, I choose to be safe and go around the dams. Never go over a dam no matter how low the weir gate is in the water. I only bring this all up because when I landed at the take-out there was a nice gentleman, on his cell phone looking at my bike, and asking if he could “help me”. That is never a good question; he was trying to ask “What the hell was I doing there hunting”. Well, I knew that I was ok to be hunting the river (except for the SWA) and so I politely listened to him and let him know what I knew, that I traveled the river most every month of the year, and that I was familiar with the rules. He was pleasant but somewhat pissed at the same time, he thought I was setup on land outside the SWA and trespassing by shooting from the shore. I can understand his concern and I am sure they do have issues with this from time to time, however, that was not what I was up to. He had been on the phone with the local wildlife official and he showed up a few minutes later to talk with us both. As it turns out I was correct about being able to be on the water during hunting season and he confirmed my right to be hunting from the water. I shook the landowners hand and he drove off. I stayed and talked with the wildlife officer for quite a while. He was extremely pleasant and very helpful with lots of advice about hunting in the SWA and he reconfirmed what I knew about the gray area in river access. I let him know that we paddle on the Platte year-round and I just couldn't see how we don’t have a right to enjoy the waterway, as long as we are not damaging any fences at the bridges where we put in. So I did get to shoot today. I took two shots and brought down one female Mallard about a half mile up from the take-out (I missed the other one). The whole experience with the landowner and the DOW officer could have taken the wind out of my sails but I understand all sides of the issue and I will continue to enjoy hunting on the South Platte in the near future.
After returning to work last week I was chatting with a colleague about our holiday break activities and his sons’ recent hunting trips. Apparently, he and a friend had been duck hunting from a raft along a stretch of the South Platte River near Kersey, CO, and had been having great luck. I was immediately interested to learn more because I knew that part of the river well. It was the same stretch that Megan and I had canoe-hunted for turkeys this fall and I have trained for my ultra-marathon trips in that area for years. I had often wondered if it was legal to shoot birds from the water (or a boat) but had just never looked into it. Any time you get on the Platte it’s the same scenario, scores of duck and geese flying right over head, many times so close it feels like you could grab one out of the air by only standing up. I was immediately taken with the idea of boating up into Centennial Valley State Wildlife Area and trying my hand at it. If you know me at all you know that I am a bit on the compulsive side. I seriously couldn’t get the idea out of my head all day and was determined to put that idea into action - quickly. Duck season had only 26 days left at this point and who knows how long we might have before an asteroid hits the earth and eliminates my chances. Besides, I knew it could be done, I’d been on that river before, I’ve even thought about how easy it could be, and I have all the cold water and hunting equipment. So I began to hatch a plan. By the time Tracey called late in the afternoon I announced that I was going to do this, soon, in fact next week. I quickly corrected myself “No, in fact I am going to get up at 4:00 AM tomorrow morning and do it, it’ll be awesome?” There, I said it. For me something magical happens when I admit an idea, to anyone, out load, because it forces me to carry it through even if it’s a really bad idea. It’s all part of my sick method of self-motivation I guess but it works for me. So I had committed myself to doing my first duck hunt, solo, shooting from a 1-person canoe, and on what turned out to be one of the coldest days of the year. Sounds like my kind of adventure trip. Well, the only real issue was that I didn’t have all the permits I needed to hunt birds yet, so on the way home from work I made a quick stop by my favorite hunting store, Wal-Mart. I picked up some steel shot, a state duck stamp, and the federal waterfowl stamp that would be my ticket to my duck hunting adventure. I also went at the chore of pulling together all of the required gear for paddling in extreme cold. Now that seems easy enough but my expedition canoe (a 1984 Sawyer Loon) was covered by many layers of summer stand up paddling boards and other associated outdoor gear. The alarm for my 4:20 AM wake-up call came at about 3:30, because I wasn’t sleeping despite my best efforts. I kept thinking to myself, ”I’m actually going duck hunting, sweet!” I seriously felt like a kid waiting for Christmas morning. All night I pictured sighting those birds in along the barrel of my Browning BPS. I could imagine the hard steel hitting their soft feathers, and how their bodies would go limp, crumble, and hit the water like some kind of kamikaze airplane being strafed from a well-placed gunnery. I was transfixed. So I rolled off the couch, turned off my alarm, and went to dress and make fresh coffee. On the 60-minute drive over to Kersey I had time to run the list of gear over in my head and I realized I had left my hunting knife at home, so I dropped by the office to pick-up a steak knife to compensate. The night air in the prairie east of Greeley is always colder than at home. Since the area is all river valley it tends to be rather damp and sometimes more windy than near the foothills where I live. Thankfully, there wasn’t a breath of wind but the temperature had dropped nearly 10-degrees from my driveway back in Fort Collins, which made it a balmy 4-degrees. I pulled my van up to the put-in spot next to the highway bridge on County Road 50 and jumped out to take a look at the water conditions. The river was running about 800 CFS, looked dark, and it was a soupy mix of water, ice chunks, and slush. It had been several years since I had traveled the Platte in such nasty conditions. On that trip I had a friend with me to enjoy the pleasant 0-degree weather and we were paddling about 15-miles point to point downstream. On this day I’d be alone and traveling about 3-miles upstream and returning to the van about an hour after sunrise, hunting for ducks as the opportunity presented itself. I quickly unloaded the boat from the van and had it packed with the essentials within a few minutes. When I get to a river I don’t like to spend any time on shore before departing, I like to just pitch the stuff in and go. The OCD side of me has always made good use of pre-trip organizing time, running through quick check lists of everything I might need. The dreamer side of me has spent so much time “imagining” what might happen on the trip that I can hardly wait once I’m there. At this point it was 5:45 AM, and as I settled into the boat and began to work myself upstream, a thought occurred to me. I hadn’t been in this canoe since pulling off the Colorado River at Potash Landing in Utah at the completion of the longest upstream paddle of my life, 49-miles from the confluence of the Green River. That was also almost eight months previous to this very chilly morning. I knew I’d be ok but I wondered how far I could really travel upstream on the limited time I had being a bit out of upstream paddling shape. I needed to get up into the Centennial Valley SWA which began about 1.2 miles upstream, but I ultimately wanted to get about 3-miles upstream so I could get a nice long float in. I also was aware that I needed to begin my downstream float by about 7:45 to get to work by 9:30, I was going to really have to push it against the slushy water. I drove my paddle into the river and pulled a bit harder. I paddled in almost complete darkness for about a half hour and then traces of sunrise began to show and so did the wildlife. The first animals I heard were what seemed to be hundreds of geese taking flight from a sandbar not 75-yards ahead of me. The first birds I saw were eagles, two mature bald eagles and a juvenile on a tree watching me go by. Further up I heard something up along the riverbed, probably a deer stirred from its slumber by the rhythmic splash of my paddle. I began to really warm up and so I removed my outer jacket and paddled in my fleece only. After about 45-minutes of paddling I had developed a white crust across my arms, shoulders, back and head. It was so cold that literally any part of my body that was putting off heat was causing a mini-snow storm on the surface of my clothes; I looked like a freezer burned Popsicle but was plenty warm. At about 6:50 the first shoot-able birds appeared from behind my left side coming upstream. These were Red Breasted Mergansers and I quickly lay down my paddle and pulled the shotgun to my face. I was completely focused on the four birds travelling tightly together and when the shot fired two fell to the water. I couldn’t believe it, one minute I was paddling and the next minute I was chasing floating birds downstream, this was awesome. The closest of the birds was definitely down but I could see that the second bird was struggling in the water. In hindsight I should have taken a second shot at him to put him out of any misery. But as I pulled the first bird into the boat that second bird struggled to get airborne and flew off very low into the fog, most definitely injured. I looked and looked for him as I continued my way upstream but he had escaped my capture and would surely be a good meal for some other critter by evening. About a mile further upstream I saw a sizable beaver headed my way. I considered taking him home as well but had no idea what I’d do with a beaver once I got it. So I just enjoyed watching him approach and then splash the water hard just feet from my boat. Not five minutes later I got another chance at a second group of Mergansers, coming in low and to my right side, from upstream. They were coming very fast and so I took the best shot I could in a hurried setup and another bird came down fast. I ferried across the current and chased him as best I could but he slipped under a log jam and was out of reach. The water was far too cold to mess with fishing him out so I assumed that I was doing my part to feed the local population that morning. At this point it was about 7:40 and I had managed to paddle 2.5 miles upstream from the car and really needed to be headed back. As I slowly drifted in the current I found myself looking right into the rising sun. With all the steam rising across the water it was a beautiful sight but also blinding, so seeing much coming from downstream was going to be tough. Just then I had two Mallards blow overhead from behind me and on downstream before I had a chance to do anything. It was clear I needed to keep an eye out over my shoulder. The last shot I had was one I actually let go. There were two Canadian geese sitting on a sandbar along river right. About 70-yards up I put my paddle down quietly to keep from spooking them. As I approached I could tell they saw me in the mist and were considering a jump into the air. I readied my gun and then finally pulled it to my face. As they jumped into the air it looked as if they were too far downstream to get a good shot and so I just watched them fly away. On closer examination they were within 20-yards and so I could have potentially taken one or both. As I paddled the last few hundred yards down to the take-out, I was definitely beginning to get cold but was absolutely elated at my success. On my first ever duck hunt I hit three birds, shooting from an unsteady canoe, and managed to even bring one home without flipping into the cold water. I was really satisfied with how it all worked out and felt glad to have made the effort on such a cold morning. Additionally, since I had already made plans to come back in just a few days and float the entire 4+ mile stretch through the SWA, I left with a lot of lesson learned and fresh ideas on what I might try differently during my return visit. More to come after Monday’s hunt.
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AuthorRob Bean is an everyday adventurer who is based in Fort Collins, Colorado. He enjoys all manner of outside activities from canoeing, to kiting, and hunting. Archives
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