Colorado waterfowlers suffering withdrawal since the regular goose-hunting season expired can grin and bear arms again.

With spring in the wings and snow geese on the move, another federally mandated Light Goose Conservation Order has begun. Saturday, hunters were called back to active duty.

Well, sort of active. Sometimes, hunting northbound light geese is wildly exciting. Other times, it's Goose Light.

This season, the jury is out. Few geese are here yet.

The order is: Do almost whatever it takes to trim overpopulated lesser snow geese and Ross geese, which have trashed the Canadian tundra, where they are headed to breed. The mission allows hunters to lure the white hordes with recorded goose calls and hunt that magic half-hour after sunset.

The daily bag limit is unattainable because it is unlimited.

The special conservation order east of Interstate 25 has been in effect in the central states for nine years - long enough that it doesn't seem so special. In that time, it has been extended from late February to now through April in Colorado.

Problem is, tons of snow geese flying north haven't proved easy to dupe. The huge flocks lack the discipline of Canada geese as they swirl like blackbirds, but they are all eyes.

Central Flyway snow geese have seen and heard every hunting trick in the book, and some have lived to be quite old. Still, there are days - mostly in fog and wind - when snow-goose hunting can be incredible.

It helps if snow geese are seriously migrating, or at least staging somewhere accessible to hunters. In fact, the geese have started showing up over Colorado's plains. But some hunters fear great waves might be defecting eastward.

Typically, the goose hordes stop over in southeastern Colorado, concentrating around Lamar and Eads. But that area remains under the shroud of brutal winter and offers little food for geese.

Farther north, snow geese cluster around Jumbo Reservoir, near Nebraska. They are arriving, but goose watchers suspect those early flocks jumped over Lamar.

Rod Norvell, an attendant at Queens State Wildlife Area near Eads, said he saw something like that happen at his end.

"I saw a thousand snows trying to land on Nee Noshe (Reservoir)," Norvell said Wednesday. "They gave up and went north."

Norvell said nobody has been hunting. "The snow is 2 feet deep in areas, and the roads turn to mud after 10 a.m.," he said.

Farther north, at Jumbo Reservoir, snow-goose numbers jumped from 2,000 to 8,000 this week, said Jeff Mekelburg of the Division of Wildlife.

"There aren't many yet, but they should start rolling in pretty good now," Mekelburg said.

Goose watchers scanning a wider field of vision say the lead flocks have staged along the continental snow line, which currently runs from northern New Mexico to southeastern Nebraska, skipping Colorado.

One wildlife area in northern Kansas, just south of the snow line, reports an invasion of 24,000 white geese. Meanwhile, the great flocks that winter in New Mexico have left the Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge.

"I don't know if they're missing us or just aren't here yet," said Trent Verquer, wildlife division biologist in Lamar. "But I'm optimistic we'll get a (hunting) season out of it."

Later, maybe. For now, Norvell offers these tips for Eads hunters: "Bring a snow shovel. And count on playing tiddlywinks."

dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com