Not Exactly a December to Remember

With early snow, the wettest fall in recent memory, and temperatures more like those I recall as a child, December 2009 offered great promise for hunting on Strum Island. It has proved to be a dud.

Strum Island is 60 acres of woodlands adjoining the Holston Army Ammunition Plant. When one totals the HAAP property, Bays Mountain park, and the privately held mountain lands, there's about 15,000 acres of mountains and riverbottoms teaming with game immediately to the east and south of the island. Wildlife makes it way onto the island with great frequency - or normally it does.

The Holston River's water levels are modified by Tennessee Valley Authority as the Ft. Patrick Henry dam is about ten miles upsteam. The usual pattern is for TVA to draw down the lakes after Labor Day and keep them low to accomodate spring rains and floods. Not all that much electricity is generated in the winter months from hydroelectric impoundments. For years, the winter months have had little flow coming from that dam.

At its thread, the sluice separating the island from HAAP is somewhere between knee and waist deep. It takes three to four hours for the water to reach Strum Island from the dam when the flow is moderate to light [500 to 2500 cfs]. Not so during the entire month of December 2009.

Today, as have most days this month, the outflow from the dam is about 8600 cubic feet per second. This amount of water takes the stream to the edge of its banks. If there's any additional flow coming from the uncontrolled north fork of the Holston which comes out of Scott County, Virginia, the river overflows its banks.

Such a volume of water keeps most deer from swimming over to Strum Island. The distance wild turkey have to fly over water from HAAP to the island nearly doubles. Such a heavy flow makes float trips down the Holston to duck hunt too dangerous for me. And, decoys won't hold with that volume of water. Ducks have had so much water in the fields, ponds, and creeks, that the river is no longer attractive to them. They can't get to the mollusks and invertebrates on which they usually feed.

Once again, mother nature [with the assistance of the Tennessee Valley Authority] has held the upper hand. December 2009 has been a bust. It's probably fortuitous that I had the flu for two weeks.