I am hoping for some information on how the drought might affect bird hunting in South America for May. I am booked for mid-May and have already paid my 50% deposit and purchased my airline tickets (wife and me). I'm wondering if it's going to be a disaster. We are planning on hunting ducks for three days and dove for three days. Any thoughts?

Carolina Counsel,
with doves you should not worry. It is pretty hard to not get a place where you can shoot 1000 rounds a day.
With ducks, in this case, it depends where you are going to be shooting. There are areas that are wetlands feb by rains and others fed by river overflow. There are rice fields where incoming water is regulated. It will come down to the same basic condotions required by all wild game, food and habitat. The ducks will be where the water and food is. If there is less wetlands area this could actually concentrate the ducks and give you better than normal shooting. Of course if you are going to be in an area that is rain fed wetlands you probably won't be shooting many ducks this year.

Hope this helps.

John:

How could we find the rainfall in specific areas of Argentina?


I am having no luck in my own search.

Thanks.

Carolina Counsel,
We have a group of nine hunters going to Cordoba leaving from Raleigh, NC. We will be hunting 5/20-5/26. Who are you hunting with and when will you be there? What have you heard about a drought? Our outfitter has not mentioned this to us.

A W

There was another thread posted by an outfitter from Argentina.

There was definitely a drought last year, I was there. It has proved difficult for me to find rainfall amounts for any area other than BA.

I'm actually going with the group that Larry Shores suggested- Argentina Outfitters during the same time as you. The news reports are devestating, with a loss of over 25% of the crops and very low water levels (I'm hunting ducks and doves). My outfitter has sent some folks down to check on the situation and I expect a report in a few weeks. They did not provide me with any information in the interim- such as "what if's."

From what I understand thus far, it may be too early to worry. It seems that February and March are the wettest months from what I read. Who knows what will happen.

There was definitely a drought last year. What I can't tell is if this year is worse than last year. I had a great shoot in spite of the drought last year. That obviously doesn't mean that this year will be OK.

This should not impact the doves. There will be more than you could ever want to shoot at anyway. There were some big marshes that we hunted last year. The water was over waist deep in spite of the drought. I would think that those would have plenty of water left. Some smaller marshes could be totally dry if the drought persists.

We are going mid July which from a water perspective should be worse than May. We have booked 6 days for ducks with Argentina Outfitters, then 3 days for dove with Los Chanares.

It is strange because 2 years ago the water was super high due to rainfall. Basically a flood. Places were dry last year that were waist deep the year before.

Obviously, this is one thing that can't be controlled.

quote:

Originally posted by larryshores:
John:

How could we find the rainfall in specific areas of Argentina?


I am having no luck in my own search.

Thanks.

Larry,
I saw a graph in the newspaper about a week ago that had a comparative of normal rainfall for the past 20 yrs and rainfall in 2008 and part of Jan 09. I didn't save it but remember that La Pampa and Buenos Aires provinces were below normal, and there were only 2 or 3 reletavily small blue spots on the map where rainfall was above historic levels, one of them was right over my hunting area! Your outfitter should know these things.