We have studied nuclear forward scattering of synchrotron radiation for the 67.41 keV resonance of 61Ni using a silicon crystal monochromator with low-index reflections and a multielement detector. This approach can be extended to other high-energy Mössbauer transitions and does not pose any restrictions on the sample environment. Under conditions of large sample thickness and short nuclear lifetime, typical for work with high-energy nuclear resonances, the nuclear decay follows a universal dependence where both thickness effects and hyperfine interactions are taken into account by time scaling.