Good morning, George. I have finally have a med from the cardiologist that has really helped my AFib condition. I now know my limitations and try my best to adhere to some basic rules like, when I get tired, I rest. That was a hard one to follow by the way. Probably the most wonderful thing that happened to me when I had a session with my cardiologist back on March 5th, I believe. He was really pleased with my EKG and was about to leave the room because he was done, when he stopped, turned around and asked, "Oh, by the way, Allan, how was your duck season this year?" I couldn't help but smile prior to telling him about it.
George, I want to apologize because I made a mistake on the water flow rates. I forgot to include the word, "cubic". I think it is supposed to read 1600cfs like it did this morning at 3:15. By the way, yes, it would be wonderful to get that water. Elephant Butte Lake which is only 75 miles south of us is only at 3% of capacity. Things about water issues are touch and go around here.
This past duck season, I drove out to the ranch where I hunt and built my blind with no water in sight. Our regular season opened on Oct. 25th and fortunately I had found some water on some BLM land that produced some excellent hunts. Whenever I had the time, I still drove out to the ranch and looked for water. There is a ditch that was cut in the ranch back in 1955 that helped drain it from the floods that normally came quite often on Spring run-offs and or major rains during the monsoon season. Last fall we had some timely rains that helped with the early teal season. It marked the first time I was able to hunt eight of the nine days in our season in 3 years. The other two years we had no water in the Rio Grande, thus no ducks for me to shoot. Since the Rio was running at an average of 250/300cfs, it took a long time for the water to seep underground and get to the ditch where I hunt which is only a couple of blocks from the Rio Grande. I first saw water beginning to show up shortly after they shut down the river to agriculture which is November 1st here in our state. Heck I kept going back more often just because I saw it but it was a mile from where my little honey hole is. I know it might be hard to understand, but the very first day that I was able to float a teal decoy or a flat bottom like the old Herter's style 62 or 72 with that built on 1/2 in. keel was on December 23rd. I was thrilled to death. So I put out 17 decoys and got all ready for a Christmas Eve day hunt. I arrived on the 24th of Dec. with an hour to spare because I was interested in seeing what kind of traffic like wood ducks/mallards were using this area now. Yes, I still enjoy hearing the whistling wings sounds trying my heart out to see what made it but knowing that it was still too dark to see the ducks. I knew it wasn't going to be much fun because on that morning my decoys were frozen solid in the little water that was there. I saw not one feather in the sky---I think that I only took a handful of ducks in January but those that I did sure made the hunt exciting. One day in January I saw 9 ducks and was elated.
The pond that I hunted on BLM land dried up in the middle of November and the timing was good for that because we had an unusually cold late fall and winter. The deepest part of the honey hole I hunted at the ranch was maybe 2 feet so almost every morning it was frozen solid and by the afternoon it melted. I did go on a couple of PM hunts but saw nothing. Hey, I am already looking forward to next year. Who knows, maybe it will be a good one in terms of having some water so that I can set out some decoys like back in 03 when I retired and thought I had died and gone to Duck Hunting Heaven on a daily basis during our long season. For a stretch of almost 10 years I had a smile on my face which is really tough on the facial muscle structures.
I have no complaints at all. This brings me to the last thing that I wanted to say. I received a card in the mail yesterday (4.1.19) from the University of Nebraska asking me to take a survey because I live within the structure of the Central Flyway. Is there anyone else on this site that got one and filled it out on their website? The reason I am asking is because of just one of their questions that I answered. It read something like this, "Do you need to shoot a duck to have a good hunt?" I answered "No". Sorry for the long winded session, George.
Al
This is Habi who couldn't get to the greenhead in time at the honey hole where I usually am at. When I made a decision to go remove 3 decoys from another spot on the ditch which happens to be one mile north of my honey hole, it was here that she spotted the duck and swam out and finally caught it. Amazing how far a duck can swim if it wants to and up stream the whole way. I was mighty proud of my pup! I hate losing a cripple.
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