The numbers coming out of the American West this spring are hard to ignore. Snowpack levels have cratered to historic lows, drought is spreading across the region, and the people who study fish and wildlife for a living are using words like "historic" and "abysmal" to describe what they're seeing. For anyone who hunts or fishes west of the Rockies — or plans to this fall — it's worth paying close attention to what's unfolding and what it could mean when the seasons open.
According to Climate Matters, the western U.S. snowpack sat at 65% below the 1991-2020 average as of March 30, the worst on record since 1981. By late April, every single region tracked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Westwide SNOTEL system was running below average. Every one. The variation is in how bad, not whether conditions are bad.
The implications stretch well beyond water managers and irrigators scrambling to figure out how to stretch limited supplies through summer. For hunters and anglers, the record-low snowpack is setting up a complicated fall season — one with real opportunities in some places and genuine cause for concern in others.
Big Game: A Mixed Bag With More Questions Than Answers
The winter that produced these terrible snowpack numbers was, paradoxically, a pretty good one for elk and mule deer survival. Mild temperatures and light snow meant animals didn't have to dig through deep drifts to find food, didn't burn through their fat reserves, and didn't face the kind of nutritional stress that typically kills off the weakest animals in a herd each winter.
Kent Hersey, big game research coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, put it plainly.
"Most of our [mule deer] mortality tends to occur during the winter, largely due to malnutrition with deep snow and things of that nature," Hersey told MeatEater. "This year, we didn't have that, and deer didn't have to burn their fat reserves. We're coming out of the winter with really high adult and fawn survival rates."
Elk saw similar benefits. Less snowpack meant better access to food throughout the winter months, and herds appear to have come through in solid shape heading into spring. For hunters, that kind of overwinter survival is usually great news — it means more animals on the landscape going into fall.
The problem is what comes next.
A dry spring and summer following a low-snow winter is a rough combination. Vegetation growth depends heavily on the steady release of moisture from melting snowpack. Without that slow, sustained release, plant growth can stall out earlier than usual, meaning animals have less to eat during the critical summer months when they're trying to pack on weight before the rut and the return of cold weather.
"There's probably not going to be as much vegetation produced because of the faster-than-usual melting period," Hersey said. "This means there's going to be increased competition for food, and it could impact milk production."
That last point matters more than it might seem at first. Milk production in does and cows directly affects fawn and calf survival through summer — the other critical mortality window beyond winter. Strong survival coming out of winter can still be undermined if females are nutritionally stressed during nursing.
Antlers, Fire, and the Wait-and-See Window
For hunters focused on trophy-class animals, the dry conditions carry another wrinkle. Antler development in bucks, bulls, and rams is heavily tied to nutrition during the spring and early summer growing period. A summer with reduced vegetation and increased competition could translate to smaller antlers on animals that might otherwise have been exceptional.
Wildfire is also a serious variable. The same conditions that have depleted the snowpack create ideal conditions for large, fast-moving fires. In some areas, catastrophic fire can transform high-quality habitat into something far less productive for years or even decades. Predator behavior can also shift when prey animals are concentrated in the limited areas that still hold green vegetation, adding additional pressure on deer and elk herds.
That said, Hersey is careful not to declare a crisis before one actually materializes.
"We're not pressing the panic button now," Hersey said. "There are still a lot of unknowns, and we are in a wait-and-see mode."
Spring rain and summer monsoonal moisture could still offset the worst of the damage. The monsoon season, which delivers crucial late-summer rainfall across much of the Southwest, is unpredictable but potentially significant. A strong monsoon year can do a lot to offset the effects of a dry winter and spring.
If conditions do stay dry, wildlife managers have tools to manage the situation. One of the primary strategies involves increasing harvest opportunities in the short term to reduce competition among animals for limited food resources.
"We drop populations a little bit in the short term. Then, when conditions improve, we would allow them to come back up to objectives," Hersey said. "We do this to hopefully save habitats from long-term damage."
In practical terms, that could mean more tags and better draw odds for western big game hunters this fall, even if the average quality of animals is down from previous years. For many hunters, more opportunity is a worthwhile trade-off.
Trout and Salmon: Cold Water Running Out
If big game faces uncertainty, coldwater fish face something closer to a near-certainty of difficult conditions across much of the West. Trout populations — both resident and migratory species — are particularly vulnerable to the kind of low-snowpack year that's unfolding right now, and the cascading effects through river and lake systems are already beginning.
Chrysten Rivard, VP Pacific Conservation for Trout Unlimited, laid out the basic problem clearly.
"When there's less water, the water warms up more quickly, and so you have too warm of temperatures for fish," Rivard told MeatEater. "Over time, this decreases their fitness levels. And then warmer water temps also lead to other water quality problems like hazardous algal blooms and excess nutrient concentrations, as well as excessive aquatic vegetation growth."
Trout are cold-blooded animals with narrow thermal tolerances. When water temperatures climb above certain thresholds, fish stop feeding effectively, become stressed, and become far more susceptible to disease. Catch-and-release fishing in warm, low water is genuinely harmful to fish in a way that it simply isn't in cold, high-water conditions. Many fisheries managers will likely respond by implementing emergency closures or catch-and-kill regulations on certain waters during the peak summer heat.
Beyond temperature, low water concentrates fish into smaller areas of suitable habitat, which increases competition for food, increases stress from higher fish densities, and makes fish more vulnerable to predators. It also increases angling pressure on the fish that remain in accessible areas, compounding the problem.
Spawning and Migration in Trouble
The effects extend beyond resident trout. Anadromous species — the salmon and steelhead that migrate between the ocean and inland rivers to spawn — face a particularly brutal set of challenges when snowpack is low and river flows drop.
"When peak flows happen at different [than usual] times, it disrupts their normal migratory cycles," Rivard said. "In addition, when we have really low flows in the summer and early fall, migratory fish are unable to go upstream [to spawn] where they want to."
Salmon and steelhead are already under pressure across much of the West from a combination of factors that predate this year's drought, including habitat loss, dam operations, ocean conditions, and overharvest in previous decades. A year with severely disrupted migration and spawning adds more stress to populations that don't have a lot of margin to absorb it.
The effects on this year's recruitment — the number of young fish produced and surviving to enter the fishery in future years — won't be fully known for some time, but the conditions heading into spawning season in many areas look rough.
Where the Water Still Flows
The picture is not uniformly bleak. Rivard notes that some areas will be less affected than others, and with the right information, anglers can still find good fishing this year.
High-elevation alpine lakes tend to stay colder longer and are less susceptible to the warming effects of low flows. Certain tailwater fisheries — rivers fed by releases from the bottom of large reservoirs, which release cold water regardless of surface conditions — can maintain viable fishing conditions even in dry years. Not all of them will escape unscathed, however.
Colorado has already announced it is fully draining Antero Reservoir, a well-known fishery, and significant drawdowns are also expected at Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Those are high-profile examples of how even managed water sources can be caught up in the consequences of a low-snowpack year.
The most important thing anglers can do heading into the season is get current, local information before they make plans.
"Understanding the local conditions of where you're planning to go is really important," Rivard said, adding that local guides and biologists can "direct folks to places that are still appropriate and good to fish and have a wonderful trip this year."
Calling a local fly shop before booking a trip is always smart. This year, it's essential.
Rivard also pointed to meadow restoration in river headwaters as one of the most effective long-term tools for buffering the effects of dry years. Healthy riparian meadows slow the movement of water through watersheds, raise stream levels, replenish groundwater, and essentially act as natural water storage that continues releasing moisture through summer. Conservation investments in that kind of infrastructure pay dividends precisely in years like this one.
Upland Birds and Waterfowl: Drought From the Ground Up
The effects of low snowpack ripple through bird populations as well, though the mechanisms are somewhat different and the outcomes vary significantly by species and geography.
Patrick Donnelly, a research scientist for Ducks Unlimited and a specialist in spatial ecology for both waterfowl and upland birds, offered a useful framework for understanding what's at stake.
"Snowpack is an ecosystem driver of water in the West," he said. "It keeps places like riparian corridors green late in the summer. If you don't have that water, you don't have those little grocery stores that birds rely on late in the summer. Soil moisture also dries up, there's not as much grass, and there aren't the invertebrates that feed birds and chicks."
That last piece — invertebrates — is often underappreciated. Insects and other invertebrates are critical food sources for newly hatched upland bird chicks, which need high-protein food in their first weeks of life to develop properly. A dry summer with limited soil moisture means fewer invertebrates, which means lower chick survival rates across a wide range of species.
Waterfowl: Mobile Enough to Adapt, But Not Immune
Waterfowl have an advantage over upland species in low-snowpack years: they can fly to find better conditions. A mallard or teal isn't stuck in a drought-stricken basin the way a pheasant or grouse is. When wetlands dry up, waterfowl can simply move.
That mobility provides a buffer, but it doesn't eliminate risk entirely. Local production — the number of birds actually hatching and being raised in a given area — is likely to be down in many western locations simply because the wetland habitat needed for nesting and brood-rearing is reduced. Fewer wetlands holding water means fewer suitable nesting sites and smaller broods surviving to fall.
There's also a disease risk that concentrates when birds are forced into limited remaining wetland areas. Avian botulism, which thrives in warm, low-oxygen water conditions, can cause significant mortality events when large numbers of birds crowd into small, degraded wetlands during late summer and fall.
The Pacific Flyway wetland complexes in the Klamath Basin and Great Salt Lake are expected to feel the effects most strongly. California's Central Valley, which serves as a critical wintering area for Pacific Flyway birds, is looking at a somewhat better situation.
Upland Species: Local Conditions Will Tell the Story
For upland hunters, the dry conditions create a more complex picture that varies significantly depending on which species and which geography they're focused on.
Species like chukar, pheasant, sage grouse, Hungarian partridge, and sharptail grouse that depend on snowpack-driven moisture are in the most precarious position. Mild winter temperatures may have produced decent overwinter survival — a repeat of what Hersey described in ungulates — but those gains are likely to be more than erased by poor summer habitat conditions.
Quail in the desert Southwest are also dealing with ongoing drought stress. These birds are highly responsive to annual moisture conditions and can crash hard in dry years, though they're also capable of impressive rebounds when good rains return.
Sage grouse represent a particular concern given their already imperiled status across much of their range. Donnelly frames the challenge in terms that capture both the cyclical nature of bird populations and the concerning long-term trend.
"I think of sage grouse populations as a pogo stick that goes up and down with weather," he said. "But we're going down an escalator instead of staying on flat ground."
It's a vivid way of describing the underlying problem: sage grouse populations have always fluctuated with weather, but the baseline is declining, which means each bad year is starting from a lower point than the last. A single rough year in an otherwise healthy long-term trend is something populations can absorb. A rough year in the context of a long downward drift is a more serious problem.
Wildfire compounds the issue in sagebrush ecosystems specifically. Fire in sage country often facilitates the spread of invasive cheatgrass, which outcompetes native plants that grouse depend on and can fundamentally alter the structure of habitat at a landscape scale.
Finding Birds in a Dry Year
The advice from Donnelly for fall bird hunters centers on being strategic about where to go rather than assuming the entire West is in equally bad shape.
"You want to find a place that's less impacted by some of the drought conditions covering the entire region," he said. "For upland hunters, I'd particularly look at parts of the Great Plains that get precipitation as rainfall and aren't dependent on snowpack levels."
That's an important distinction. Much of the western drought is a snowpack story, not simply a rainfall story. Areas of the Plains that receive their precipitation in the form of rain during the growing season may have had perfectly adequate moisture for birds and habitat even if they're within the broader geographic area affected by western drought. Researching precipitation patterns for specific areas before committing to a destination could pay off significantly.
For waterfowl hunters, the calculus involves tracking where birds actually go when they're displaced from drying wetlands — which can sometimes concentrate them in remaining good habitat in ways that create surprising hunting opportunities.
The Bigger Picture for Western Hunters and Anglers
What this year represents is both an immediate management challenge and a preview of conditions that could become more common over time. The experts speaking to these issues aren't just describing a single bad winter — they're describing systems under increasing stress, where each difficult year compounds the effects of previous ones.
For hunters and anglers planning western trips this year, the practical advice is consistent: do your homework before you go, lean on local knowledge heavily, and be flexible enough to adjust plans based on current conditions rather than assuming last year's spots will fish or hunt the same way.
Some opportunities will be better than expected. Big game hunters may find more tags available and better draw odds if managers decide to increase harvest in response to drought conditions. Parts of the West that aren't snowpack-dependent could produce excellent upland bird hunting. Tailwater trout fisheries and high alpine lakes may hold fish in fishable conditions well into summer.
Other parts of the picture are genuinely concerning and will take years to sort out. Anadromous fish populations that have a rough spawning year in 2025 won't show that impact in the fishery for several years. Sage grouse populations that decline sharply this summer won't recover overnight even if next year's conditions are excellent.
The West has been through dry years before. Wildlife populations are resilient, managers have tools to respond, and a strong monsoon season or a return to normal snowpack next year could change the trajectory significantly. What the current moment calls for isn't panic, but it does call for paying attention — to the data, to the experts, and to the conditions on the ground when the seasons open this fall.
