(Greenhead.net Pro Staffer Kody Riggan hunts the timber of Northeast Arkansas at his family’s club, Squareshooter Hunting Club, located in the Black River Bottoms. Look for more of Kody’s contributions throughout the fall and on through duck season.)
In my 30 years of duck hunting, I have never seen the dry conditions like we now have. I have been pumping on zero graded rice fields for over 10 days and still can’t push water across one of them. In addition to that, our new relift pump intake, for our flooded timber, is sitting about 2 feet out of the water at the moment. We will have enough water to hunt our farm this weekend, but I don’t have a good feeling about it.
I had a discussion with a friend Sunday at lunch and he was telling me he had pumped up his 200 acre green timber reservoir, but really wished he hadn’t. I tend to agree with him in that unless we get some rain to build some surface water, we won’t be able to hold any large concentrations of ducks for very long. Once the pressure starts, they will move out in a hurry.
Some of our customers in Missouri signed up for the program that pays the landowners up to $50 per acre to flood their land. This caused a large number of people to start pumps that would not have normally done so. As a result, there are a few ducks in Southeast Missouri for the time being.
So we will keep praying for rain or hope that ducks start dry feeding in Arkansas …
