Sunday, October 24, 2010

no water

A few days ago, Chad Love of the Mallard of Discontent posted about the lack of water in his early season ducking haunts over in Oklahoma. Full of hubris or too cocksure, I commented that "at least our river is still flowing". I should have checked first.



That's Booker and I standing right in the middle of the main, and only, channel!
This'll be my eleventh or twelfth season hunting the Rio Grande and this is the lowest I've ever seen it at this time of year. The water will come up once irrigation season ends in November, but it's going to have to come way, way up for there to be enough water to float (or attract) many birds.



Nonetheless, we saw a few ducks on our scout and made some preparations for the season.








Duck season starts this upcoming week. It's usually slow at first, with the lack of water I'm guessing it'll be really slow, but we lucked into sandhill crane permits for later in the year and are looking forward to a chance at the "ribeye of the sky" as well as more ducks once they re-water the river and some (hoped for) bad weather up north pushes them down.

4 comments:

Peculiar said...

We were just down in T or C at the hot springs, and it was crazy low. I had seen a brochure for someone offering inflatable kayak trips down there, an appalling thought, and had remarked upon the utter lack of current. Someone replied, "Oh, c'mon, you can see a little water moving." "Er, yes, but that way is upstream." Damn dry September! These last few days have been much nicer.

Terry Scoville said...

Well we had a horribly dry Sept. Oct which included both my deer and elk hunts. They ended 2 days ago and last night it started raining and now it's snowing. Just go and figure. I wish you luck on your opener and look forward to hearing more about the "ribeye of the sky" hunt. No such permits here in Oregon.

mdmnm said...

Jackson,

IK trips down the upper Butte, lower Rio sound like.....well, a good chance to practice your flatwater skills. I hope a little of the recent moisture works its way into the streams.

Terry,
Bummer on the dry deer and elk season. This last weekend brought some moisture up high, which I'm sure pleased the folks in the 2nd Colorado combined deer/elk and those that had tags in NM. No sandhill hunts in Oregon? I'm surprised- I thought you all had a pretty good population.

Kirk Mantay said...

Us too out east. Very dry. At least goose season is coming soon.