Michigan.....

[MarketHunter]

The duck season opens here on Saturday as I've mentioned in another thread. I went scouting this morning and the report could certainly be better. The only private place we've got to hunt has very little water but I did see about 20 birds. Mostly wood ducks, a pair of mallards, and maybe some teal. The water is so low there's only one place you could get into anything like cover. I'm going back tomorrow afternoon to stick up a little blind. The mud is just over the knees so we're in for a workout setting decoys.

After I left there I thought I'd make a run by the infamous Mud Hole to see what it was looking like after the dry summer. This was our go to local duck marsh for a long time. As I lamented last year, it's been bought by the County as a wildlife sanctuary so our gunning days there are over.

As I walked down the trail I realized a huge pin oak had fallen over the path. I had to circle way around in the buck brush to get back on track. I didn't realize it till I got around the deadfall but in circling I'd actually crossed the canal and was behind the old permanent blind. I'd taken my waders off and had come this far in street shoes, to say I was stunned would put it mildly. The canal always held 2 or 3 feet of water, it was so grown up and dry I didn't even realize I'd crossed it. I walked on out to the end of the point and found that the whole slough was bone dry.

Where I stood in a cattail break with three feet of water (well two feet of silt mud and a foot of water) last season shooting wild geese there were weeds grown waist high and not a drip of water to be seen.

I circled on around and actually got up in the old blind around the other side of the point. That hide has stood there rock solid for all the seasons I've hunted the area. Now all of a sudden the roof is near caved in and the floor is rotting out, you'd never know it was the same blind.

The slough is bone dry, a tree has fallen across our well beaten path, and the blind is falling down. It's like the place knows it's hunting days are over and has given up the ghost. It was a bitter walk back to the truck......



DLH