Late last Thursday afternoon I drove out to the small farm in the Mississippi River bottoms where I do most of my duck hunting. I went out there to see where there was water and how deep and, how the weeds were growing. The farm, or the mud hole as I call it, is less than half a mile from the banks of the Mississippi on the Missouri side, north of the Missouri River valley and to the west of where the two great rivers meet. It's in about as good a place as there is to hunt ducks.
The mud hole is a managed wetland. Past management practices are no longer effective for reasons I will explain. There are big plans for the future of the mud hole and some changes already underway to increase the diversity of the wetland and the wildlife it supports.
More about the mud hole, how it is managed as a wetland and, my observations from the field that day are after the jump.
ABOUT THE MUD HOLE:
I've come to call it the mud hole because there's only been very sporadic farming done there for well over a decade and it's really muddy. The farm is in a low spot in the bottoms and much of it bordered by a slough that's been silted in and choked full with trees killed by constant flooding and willows that grew up when the trees fell. It floods a lot. All of the bottoms have been flooding with increasing frequency since the big flood in 1993.
There are several reasons for the increased flooding. The Corps of Engineers' channelization of the two great rivers is the most obvious cause. After the Corps began its work thousands of acres of flood plain were turned into farmland and levied off to further protect it from the rivers. For the last couple of decades commercial and residential developments in and just above the bottoms and the levies built for their protection have increased rain run-off and decreased the areas where it can go. Then there is the impact of climate change which seems to be bringing more water, not less.
The mud hole is surrounded and crossed by old farm levees which divide it into four fields. These farm levees are low by comparison to what's down there. Admittedly they'd be higher if we could have afforded to join the rush to build them up before the Corps put a cap on their height in the mid 90's. Running along the outside of the levees, bordering three sides of the farm is Fish Slough. The farm fields are crowned so water will run off into the borrow ditches (where dirt was borrowed to build the levees) then out the levee gates into the slough. We can't open the gates on the culvert pipes in the levees until the slough goes down. If we did the slough would back water up into the mud hole. We're the last piece of ground along Fish Slough to drain before it flows into the river.
MANAGING THE MUD HOLE AS A WETLAND:
The mud hole is not exactly a natural wetland. It was once, the majority of the farm land in the bottoms was. For nearly seventy years the place has been farmed and managed as seasonally flooded crop land. The fields would be planted in corn, about 60% percent of that harvested in the fall and wide swaths left standing for the ducks.
There was also some bottomland timber wetland on the farm that the slough meandered through. There were always big hopes for the year's Pin Oak and Willow Oak acorn crop. When the slough came up the water would spread out through the woods just barely covering the ground in most places. Flocks of ducks would fall like leaves through the tree branches to get into the flooded timber and feed on the acorns. The photo of the flooded timber in River Bends Conservation Area that's on the last page is what our woods looked like.
There is a well and an electric pump we use to flood the fields at the beginning of October. The fields are pumped up to about 18 inches. An optimal level for dabbling ducks like Mallards, Wood Ducks, Gadwall, Widgeon, Pintail and Northern Shoveler (the "smilin' mallard"). The duck season for Missouri's central zone opens during the first week of November and goes out the first week of January. In early March the plugs get pulled and the fields drain. When the fields dry the corn that was left standing is harvested.
There have always been times when all didn't go according to that plan. When the fields are flooded or too muddy to plant we grow weeds for the ducks. To grow weeds the ducks want to eat we manage the ground as a moist soil wetland. Keeping the right amount of water in the fields for the rignt amount of time creates conditions that the weeds we want, the ones the ducks like, will thrive in. The woody plants and weeds that produce little food that would grow in the mud hole if the ground were to dry out, mostly Cocklebur which nothing likes, can't grow in this wet environment.
When it's clear that we won't be able to get corn in, before it's too late we trap or pump water about a foot deep in the fields. We slowly draw the water down keeping the ground wet at least through April. If the water goes down too fast we can pump more or if the slough is up, open the levee gates and let it back water up into the fields. Maintaining water at a consistent depth across the fields and trying to draw it down on schedule involves a good bit of work. There are high spots, the crowns of the fields, where we can't hold enough water and low spots where we hold to much. Just like mixing cake batter it's easy to add water but nearly impossible to get rid of it.
Where we succeed at keeping the ground wet enough for the right amount of time we get: Lots of Smartweed; Sago Pondweed ("duck potatoes") in pools; Yellow Nutsedge and lots of other sedges; Barnyard Grass; Fall Panicum; Rice Cutgrass; and Wild Millet. There are many other good weeds that grow in the moist soil but these we try to manage for.
BIG PLANS:
After the 2009 duck season, a decision was made to stop fighting the floods and go all in to manage the place as a moist soil wetland. The crowns on the fields will be graded off. The levees will be moved around and built up, and the slough cleared of dead timber and willows. This will stop some flooding but more importantly the mud hole will drain better. When that's finished we will plant the area along the banks of the slough in a mix of hardwood trees native to the bottoms; Pin Oak, Willow Oak, Overcup and White Oak, and Persimmons ("deer cocaine") among others. We will maintain some cropland, much less than what there is now, that we will flood in the fall.
These are big plans that require a degree of knowledge to implement far beyond what we possess. It's also a lot of work. Far more work than we could ever do alone. We have a lot of help though. The Missouri Department of Conservation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and from the private sector Ducks Unlimited have thrown in with us to make it happen.
All this help from biologists, hydrologists, botanists and engineers comes at what we believe is a small price and one we were eager to pay. In exchange for this help we have given the Missouri Department of Conservation a conservation easement on the property. The mud hole remains all ours, it's private property and we could sell it all tomorrow if we wanted. However, nobody will ever be able to subdivide or develop the land, no more than fifteen percent may ever be farmed and livestock will never be raised there. We may construct a dwelling and put up a barn or similar structure but we never will. It's a mud hole in a flood plain.
Work was supposed to really begin in earnest early this year. Flooding all spring brought much of it to a halt. We did get the crowns graded off the two back fields along the slough. Downstream on the slough, the state highway department cleared a large section of its course and dug a straight bypass ditch to cut off its meanders so it will drain faster to prevent the road from flooding. That was a real break and has helped a lot to drain our place after the flooding. These two changes on the land are huge for us We have been able to fill and now draw down the water in the two back fields all according to plan. From the tops of the levees I hand sowed millet onto the ground on the other side of the borrow ditches where nothing had grown before.
MY OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FIELD:
So, what was it like out at the mud hole last Thursday evening? It was blistering hot. The heat index was 110+ and it had to be twice as humid in the bottoms as it was in the city. Before I stepped out of the truck to open the gate I buttoned up my long sleeve shirt, tucked my pant legs into my socks and slathered every inch of exposed skin with 100% deet to keep the mosquitoes at bay.
I expected it to smell much worse out there than it did. The rotting bodies of carp, buffalo, drum, and catfish that swam in with the flood and became trapped were scattered at the edges of the fields and stacked close in the borrow ditches. In a corner, where the ditch was deeper a few dozen fish barely hung on in a foot or two of water. They had thrashed the water into muddy slurry fighting one and other for a spot at the surface to gasp for breath. Fertilizer. I quickly walked past it.
Peering over the tops of the fields from the levee they looked pink because the Smartweed is flowering. There is a whole lot of Smartweed. There is a whole lot Wild Millet, much of what I had sown came up and all of it was starting to make seeds. There was some Rice Cutgrass, no Sago Pondweed. When I reached the center where the levees crossed I put up a flock of little ducks, teal and Woodies, that were hidden out in the weeds where some water must have pooled. They took off with lots of squeals and whistles.
A group of Red-Winged Blackbirds stood atop the woodier weeds. They would all take off and then come back down again where they had been. In the fall there will be massive trailing flocks of them that go on for miles and move like schools of fish. The Killdeer were running everywhere on the muddy flats. Their nests are on the gravel bars and shoals out on the river and if you come near they put on an act of having broken a wing to lead you away. At the back of the mud hole, where Fish Slough runs along the levees there were four Great Egret and a Great Blue Heron wading. A few mud hens or American Coots swam near the waders. The egrets walked away from me. The heron spooked making a sound I think pterodactyl must have made too. It's a big Grok!
When I topped the levee a woodcock flushed into the slough. On top there is a deer trail where there are lots of mammal tracks and a few muddy trails or slides that go down the back side of the levee into the slough. There are otters around but I've never seen one. Nearly all of the tracks were deer and raccoon. I looked for beavers' webbed prints but didn't see any. Several beaver had been live trapped up the slough and moved.
From the top of the back levee I saw lots of muskrat houses built along or near levees which is not a good thing. They breed like rats and a muskrat burrow in a levee will cause a breach when the water comes up the side and runs into his hole. It doesn't have to be much water either. It was a muskrat that caused the breach in the Winfield levee that flooded the town and much of the bottoms in Lincoln County in 2008. He was hunted hard without success. The town was able to keep up repairs to the levee for a few days before it let go.
We had a man that trapped the mudhole. He showed up every year the last week of duck season to ask permission to trap. He hasn't for several seasons now and you can tell. During the fur bearer season, if given the opportunity I will shoot the muskrats.
There was a huge clump of oyster mushrooms on a fallen tree the other side of the slough. It was too deep to cross there. By that time there was no way I was going to take the long way around to get them. The mosquitoes had become truly unbearable and several horse flies had found me so I headed.
I will be back out there in a few weeks, it won't be long then until we begin to pump water into the fields. All the weeds should be making seed and the fields should be dry so I can walk out and inspect them. I should see some early migrators.
I'm really looking forward to next year's duck season though. I want to see what the mud hole will look like after the all heavy equipment work is done and then the season after that when we've gotten the trees in the ground. It will be several duck seasons before it really begins to take shape. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. When I do I'll have some pictures of the mud hole for you.
duckhunter
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