Re: ideal field prep for us
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 5:31 am
Looks about as right as can be to me.
The great rub with an ideal (barely more than puddled) flood is that most guys can't both take water off and put it on to replace evaporation. Often neither these days. But it sure is nice when you can.
I'm one who'd rather hunt literal puddles for ducks, as well as geese, than a spoon flood. And have had some super duck seasons in "goose blinds" the camp deemed too expensive to flood but I wasn't too lazy to do the shovel work it took to hold a skosh of rain water over large acreages around them. (Always best to avoid the suspicion associated with small patches of flooded ag land.) On leases with limited pumping, I was inclined to live with too much water on the uphill side of the blind's levee and use it as a reservoir to keep the low side as close to "right" (think "clods and stick-ups") as circumstance allowed.
But the overwhelming majority of our renters cry over anything less than the foot of water spoons seem to find ideal.
John, I'm going to have to pay more attention to that mallard and blue thing you've been mentioning. Know some pintails seem drawn by bodies of blues and hang near, if not with, them, but I can also recall a couple exceptionally sweet mallard and mottled shoots (behind Tim Litel's new Thornwell camp) over rags, as well as odds and ends of them elsewhere during my mostly white-spread years. Maybe just so call responsive, they couldn't resist a look despite not wanting to put up with mass competition from blues while feeding.
The great rub with an ideal (barely more than puddled) flood is that most guys can't both take water off and put it on to replace evaporation. Often neither these days. But it sure is nice when you can.
I'm one who'd rather hunt literal puddles for ducks, as well as geese, than a spoon flood. And have had some super duck seasons in "goose blinds" the camp deemed too expensive to flood but I wasn't too lazy to do the shovel work it took to hold a skosh of rain water over large acreages around them. (Always best to avoid the suspicion associated with small patches of flooded ag land.) On leases with limited pumping, I was inclined to live with too much water on the uphill side of the blind's levee and use it as a reservoir to keep the low side as close to "right" (think "clods and stick-ups") as circumstance allowed.
But the overwhelming majority of our renters cry over anything less than the foot of water spoons seem to find ideal.
John, I'm going to have to pay more attention to that mallard and blue thing you've been mentioning. Know some pintails seem drawn by bodies of blues and hang near, if not with, them, but I can also recall a couple exceptionally sweet mallard and mottled shoots (behind Tim Litel's new Thornwell camp) over rags, as well as odds and ends of them elsewhere during my mostly white-spread years. Maybe just so call responsive, they couldn't resist a look despite not wanting to put up with mass competition from blues while feeding.