Rain Dampens the Middle of Shotgun Season 2

A strong area of low pressure is pulling out of the desert southwestern US, and moving towards Iowa. As a southwestern storm system, you can expect it to bring 2 things: warmth and moisture. We will see enough warmth, that this storm will be entirely rain. We could also see some new daily rainfall records as upwards of an inch will fall in central Iowa.

The daily rainfall record for December 14th in Des Moines, IA is 0.61" set back in 1992. There is about a 95% chance that record will fall with several rounds of rainfall starting Tuesday afternoon and lasting through Wednesday evening. The rain wont be the only thing falling. The barometric pressure has been high the last week or so thanks to an arctic high pressure close by. Now the pressure will steadily fall until Wednesday night, and that can be a very useful hunting asset.

I've hunted many rainy days in my life. When the temperature is cold (30s) and the rain is anything heavier than sprinkles (enough to get you soaked), I have found deer movement to be light and usually the animals are immature. But this doesn't mean rainy weather is a bad thing! I have sat several evenings where it rained steadily all afternoon, but right at sunset it let up to just heavy mist and drizzle with fog. Every one of those evenings featured great deer feeding activity and shot opportunities. My theory is low pressure spurrs strong feeding activity, but heavy rain dampens this movement significantly. Heavy snow on the otherhand, has never slowed the deer down at my end of the field. I relish the days where I'm covered in snow as the flakes are falling and the deer pile into the fields. So it will be important to watch the forecast the next few days as this storm moves in. Keep track of the radar here, and any breaks in the action moving your way should result in an excellent evening ambush.



My 2003 2nd Season Shotgun Buck. Thanks to Rod and Cory
Simon for inviting me along for the hunt!



Here's my hunting weather forecast, Tuesday evening will be 4 out of 5 stars for hunting. Wednesday morning will likely be a 2 out of 5 stars hunt. Wednesday evening will be 3 out of 5 for most of eastern Iowa (worse if the rain stays steady), but western Iowa (west of highway 169) should bump up to nearly 5 out of 5 stars to hunt. Over there, the rain will relax to just drizzle, mist and dense fog as the barometric pressure falls to the lowest point it's been in 10 days. Deer can probably sense the cold winter wind is just hours away and feeding activity should be very good! Thursday the deer will be in security cover most of the day with strong cold winds driving across the state. This is excellent for stalking deer in the bedding areas, but horrible for stand hunters. We'll talk about the weekend in my next blog. Good luck!