How is the Drought Affecting Your Plans For Deer,Bear, and other Big Game?

[Horizontal Hunter]

How is the drought affecting you your plans for hunting big game scouting and hunting this season?



https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx

Most of my areas have multiple water sources so it won’t change things much for me. Some of the smaller areas dry up during times like this but there is still plenty of water available.

My access will be easier in a couple of my spots though so I will appreciate that.

Bob

[Trout]

It's gonna be a huge factor for me this fall. I went over every square foot of the unit I'm hunting antelope in Onx and marked every water hole/source. My game plan is to hunt from water hole to water hole until I find sign I can't walk away from at one of them.

For whitetails the primary area I hunt is within sight of one of the largest body of freshwater in the world, yet there are no water sources other than logging trail mud puddles for over a mile. Most of those have dried up this year, first time I've ever seen it. I scouted em all out to see which are still holding water to get a good idea which will still be wet come season and my strategy the first week or so of the season will be to hunt bedding adjacent to those puddles.

What really blows my mind is how dry its been here, and where I live and hunt isn't even colored on that map.

[Dewey]

Everything seems pretty normal around here so I’m not affected by any overly dry conditions. Still getting my feet wet in the marsh in all the normal spots. Huge windstorms last December flattened many square miles of cattails. The water is still plenty deep underneath them but now I have a nice tight floating bed to walk on to stay above.

I’m guessing much of Texas is out of that drought stage now after getting 15” of rain in 15 hours.