A quick review. They drop the boards around mid October to start catching the rain fall. Late October we get some heavy rains and the Metro starts looking good for opening day. The fields around the Metro are loaded with ducks. I'm licking my chops. I go down to do early scouting that happens to be the day that the Special Deer Hunt starts. Talk to some hunters and they say the woods were flooded but the water is dropping because the AGFC had "pulled" the boards. The story is that some farmers whose fields are adjacent to the Metro WMA complain and the local WMA officers make a decision without notifying higher authorities. There had been a law suit in the past that the AGFC lost under similar situations. The head man on the board admitted that they should have just paid the farmers some compensation for them "unable to get their crops out" instead of pulling the boards and draining the huntable water that would have been idea for opening day. I had to walk 30-40 minutes on dry land in the woods before I hit water. It was a squealer's heaven but the big ducks were gone.:frown: Then we get more rain and the Metro gets right. The weather up north finally gets cold and we have the ducks that we haven't had in 3 or 4 years at the Metro. Then the season ends, opens for week and closes again. We get more rain and now the ducks are thick. The water is now higher than they like I suppose to keep the trees in the GTR alive so they start the emergency de-watering. They just pull the plug and walk it appears and let the rough edge drag. Everyone that hunted the 3'rd split should have killed ducks for a short period. Now you have a situation where there is very little water, hordes of hunters surrounding it, and it does not take a duck with a pea size brain to figure out that is not a good place to be. This week looks like it is going to be a hard freeze and that lower water just freezes faster than the level we had two weeks ago. I'm just venting but I feel better now.:soapbox: