Gila Rains

[nmelktrout]

They have arrived... The Gila is greening up and the tanks are filling up! Hung some more cameras and glassed yesterday before getting HAMMERED with rain. The big deluges were spotty with some tanks overflowing with water and others less than a half mile away only getting 6". That and some of the arroyos and ditches were absolutely flooded. A good thing to see, that's for certain. Looks like spring with lots of green shoots springing up everywhere. There may be an acorn crop as well as the oak has sprung to life.

Even better was the quality of the animals that I saw. No hip bones or ribs showing and their coats are starting to look sleak and healthy. I'll post some pictures when I get home tonight, but things are finally starting to look up in our beloved Gila. There WILL be some good bulls killed this year. Look for them to start coming out of the wood-work in the next two weeks...

-Cody

www.streamflies.com

 

[scottr]

Great report. I've been watching via the interactive maps on weather.com. Nothing beats watching a green or yellow (rain) pixels moving across the wilderness. Can't wait to get down there for some scouting trips.

 

[SDBugler]

Thanks for the good news!!! Hopefully they didn't come too late for maximum antler developement.

What part of the Gila are you in? I will be headed to 16D for the first rifle hunt. Sure wish I could be down there scouting but living in SD won't allow that until the week before the season.

 

[baerman]

Thanks for the update! Drew the first ML tag in 15. I've been watching on weather.com too. Looks like they are still below average for rain fall in July but good to know they got enough for the grass to green up.

I think antler growth is all but done now but hopefully they were able to capitalize on some green grass the last few weeks anyways.

Can't wait to start seeing some pictures of bulls harvested! Good luck all!

 

[1FastGambler]

Nice!!

Can hardly wait!! Two more weeks & I'll be there scouting, and in four more weeks it's on!

Taking my 17 year old son on his first archery hunt! Can hardly wait!!

 

[nmelktrout]

As you can see, until very recently the animals have been in pretty poor shape. In fact, they've literally been skin and bones (and this is on a section of private that hasn't seen cattle in a decade):

Same camera, 2 days later. Note the erosion from the first significant rain of the year. This little guy is going to water and is the first picture I have of an animal watering in this tank since January when it dried up.

A view of the North end of the Gila between storms. Note the herd of cows and calves in the lower right-hand corner (will be undertaking a significant camera upgrade in the next two weeks). Through the looking glass these and the other cows I found looked much better than they had a couple of weeks earlier.

-Cody



www.streamflies.com

 

[scottr]

Thanks for the pics....looks like the rain came just in time.

 

[crazyaboutcoues]

The Gila river is still running very low, that tells me that the rain is sporatic and hasn't hit all of the wilderness...The river should be screaming by now...


www.gilawildernesshunting.com

 

[nmelktrout]

Crazy, talk to Wes and HC if you didn't already see them this weekend. They were further South than me and were in the same weather, if not worse. I saw tanks in the North Gila that were dry at 8 in the morning and had 6 feet of water by 3 in the afternoon. Definitely spotty, but a good rain for C, E, 21 and 17.

www.streamflies.com

 

[PJHntr]

The rain was really spotty in the areas we checked out. We watched the clouds roll in around 1:00 on Sat. It went from not a drop falling to 1/4 mile away there was standing water in the flats that were dry 30 minutes prior. Arroyos were flowing and had been flooding on Friday night. All the cows and calves we saw looked good and healthy but from elktrouts pics it doesn't appear they've looked like that for very long. Saw a couple of younger bulls that looked good as well. They weren't big but did not appear to have stunted growth, just looked like young healthy bulls.