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The Brush & the Baya field almanac of two territories
Wide flat of low mesquite and prickly pear under a pale dawn sky, a caliche two track running away from the camera, ground mist standing in the low places

Field almanac · First edition

Two territories, read by the season

One is a corridor of thornscrub and caliche roads where doves and bobwhites live or fail on the rain that fell months earlier. The other is a cold drainage where five species of Pacific salmon come back on a calendar nobody controls. This almanac reads both as places and as seasons. It walks the chain that produces a date and the chain that produces a count, and it names the document at every step so you can read it yourself.

South Texas brush countryNushagak and Bristol Bay

01-05The five sections of the almanac

Two territories, the calendar that governs them, the rainfall that fills or empties one of them, and the run that fills the other.

  1. Dawn mist standing over a flat of mesquite and prickly pear, a caliche county road running north out of frame under a wide pale sky

    Brush Country

    Thornscrub and caliche. What the same square mile offers a dove and what it offers a bobwhite are not the same thing.

  2. Cold grey water moving through a wide gravel bar, a low spruce line on the far bank under a flat overcast sky, no boat and no person in frame

    Nushagak & the Bay

    Five species of Pacific salmon, one drainage, and management decisions taken on counts made the same week.

  3. A steel pipe ranch gate standing open on a caliche road at first light, chain hanging loose from the post, low mesquite and sunflower stalks behind it, long shadows

    Openers & Dates

    A season date is produced by four institutions in sequence. Knowing which one did what tells you why it changed.

  4. Standing water pooled in the ruts of a disked field at dusk, cracked mud drying at the edges, a green shoot coming through in the foreground

    After the Rains

    The season you hunt was decided by weather you did not see. Rain builds cover, cover builds broods.

  5. A school of spawning sockeye salmon with unspotted brick red bodies, olive green heads and hooked jaws, holding side by side in clear shallow water over grey gravel, seen from a low bank

    The Run

    A run is a shape, not an event. Which week you stand in decides the fish, the water and the rules.

LogbookThe logbook of the desk

Dated notes: what the desk read, in which document, and what it changed on the pages. Not a field diary, and not an observation we did not make.

  1. Two paper regulation booklets stacked square on a plain wooden table beside a pencil, flat window light from the left, no text legible

    The chain behind a dove date, end to end

    Question: who actually fixes a Texas dove opener. Followed the sequence from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and its federal regulations to the annual Fish and Wildlife Service framework, then to the Parks and Wildlife Commission adoption, then to the state publication a hunter reads. Settled the order of the four steps, which is what the openers pages now describe. It did not settle any date, and no date is printed.

  2. A wide grey river seen from a low gravel bank, riffled water, a line of dark spruce on the far side under heavy cloud

    What a sonar escapement estimate is, and is not

    Question: what exactly the Nushagak counts represent. Established that escapement is an estimate produced by counting equipment at a fixed place in the river, compared against a goal set by the Board of Fisheries, and that the department can act in season on that comparison. Wrote the distinction between the estimate, the goal and the instrument into the reading the water page.

  3. An empty caliche ranch road running straight between low thornscrub at first light, fence posts on the left, heat haze not yet risen

    Roadside counts: a real measure of a narrow thing

    Question: how much weight a late summer roadside quail count carries. Kept the method, dropped every figure. A fixed route sampled at a fixed season is a genuine measurement of what passes near a road at that hour, and is not a census of a county. The seed and counts page now says both halves of that instead of quoting a number.

  4. A blank white index card pinned by one brass pin to an otherwise empty corkboard, shallow angle, warm lamp light from the right

    Why no year value appears anywhere on this site

    Decision rather than a reading. Season dates, bag limits, escapement goals, forecasts and counts all change annually or daily, and a copy of them here would be a slower wrong version of a document that is already public and free. Every page that would otherwise carry such a value now names the publication that carries it.

  5. Shallow clear water over pale gravel with several dark salmon shapes holding against the current, seen from directly above the bank

    Five species, five calendars, one drainage

    Question: whether the five Pacific salmon of the bay can be treated as one run. They cannot. Sockeye, Chinook, chum, coho and pink differ in timing, in abundance and in how long they hold in fresh water, and pinks return in strength on alternating years. The five salmon page treats each separately for that reason.

  6. A weathered empty wooden signpost frame at the edge of a dirt track, board missing, brush behind it, overcast afternoon light

    What this domain was, and what this site is not

    Read the archived history of the address before writing a line. It carried a commercial hunting and fishing operation under a trading name identical to the domain. None of that is continued here: no name, no person, no address, no telephone, no rate, no affiliation and no press record is reproduced, and the former commercial addresses answer with an honest error rather than a redirect.

  7. A wide horizon split between dry pale grassland in the foreground and a dark ridge of low trees behind, flat light, no structures

    Two territories, and the line between them

    Fixed the scope. The archive of this address covered south Texas bird country, the Bristol Bay drainage and Alaskan big game. The almanac keeps the first two, which are readable through public regulation and public fishery management, and drops big game entirely rather than write thinly about it. The old big game addresses are therefore not redirected anywhere.

  8. A folded paper map opened flat on a plank table with a pencil resting diagonally across it, morning side light, place names not legible

    The shape of the almanac: five sections and a log

    Settled the architecture before any page was written. Two sections for the two places, one for the calendar that governs the southern one, one for the rainfall cycle that fills or empties it, one for the run that fills the northern one, and this log. Fourteen pages under them, each with a single question, which is the count the almanac keeps.

PagesEvery page of the almanac

Fourteen pages of territory and season. Each one answers one question and says which public document carries the values it does not print.

  1. · Brush Country

    Where the flight lines cross the brush

    Doves fly a daily circuit rather than wander. Once you can name the four things they are travelling between, the lines over a piece of brush country stop looking accidental.

  2. · Brush Country

    Quail coveys and the cover they hold

    Bobwhites do not need good habitat so much as three different habitats stacked close together. That requirement explains almost every empty pasture in the brush country.

  3. · Brush Country

    Why water organises a brush country evening

    In a dry year a single stock tank can be the busiest thing for miles. In a wet one the same tank is nothing at all. The difference is not the tank.

  4. · Nushagak & the Bay

    Reading the water: how a run is counted

    This page follows a salmon from the tide line past two white tents on the lower Nushagak, and shows how a beam of sound becomes a number a manager can act on. The run is counted with imaging sonar in a single channel, sockeye nearly all inside the beams and king salmon only partly, and the day’s figures land in documents any reader can open.

  5. · Nushagak & the Bay

    Five salmon, five timings

    King, sockeye, chum, coho and pink do not enter the Nushagak together. This page sets out what each fish is, where each one spawns, and how those facts fix the calendar of the run.

  6. · Nushagak & the Bay

    Tides, currents and the set of the bay

    This page lays out how a tide is produced, why the rising water carries a flood and an ebb current, and where slack water falls in the day. It then follows the tide up the lower Nushagak, where the bay slows the river’s flow daily, and names the documents that carry the schedule.

  7. · Openers & Dates

    How the openers get their dates

    This page follows one line of the regulation booklet upstream to its source: a treaty statute, the annual frame the Interior Department draws, and the Texas commission that adopts the dates in the open. The hunter reads a date; the desk names the documents that put it there.

  8. · Openers & Dates

    Opening week, read from the field

    The first days of a dove season show heat, water, feed and the weight of hunters on public ground, and almost nothing about the birds to come. This page reads an opener for what it is worth, explains why the second week differs, and names the documents that carry the dates, the zones and the daily numbers.

How this almanac works, and how it corrects itself, is set out by the desk. Every document it relies on is listed on the sources page. A wrong date, a run nobody saw, a link that leads nowhere: a line to the desk is enough. What the site does and does not collect is in the privacy note.