W 2700 S, Rexburg, ID 83440

First light here comes off the Teton front and finds the water before it finds the field. On a fall morning, a hundred ducks work the slow current while geese drop in over the cattails in twos and threes. That is an ordinary sunrise on the Texas Slough.

The property runs 34 acres on a tributary of the Henry's Fork west of Rexburg. Most of it lies under pivot, level and productive, and cattle graze it today. The slough moves through the place at an unhurried pace with cattails standing thick along the banks, the sort of edge that holds birds and gives a hunter somewhere to disappear.

The ground carries irrigation water rights. Much of it stays open through the winter after the rest of the valley has frozen, and in January, when open water is scarce, the birds find it. What sets this one apart is the company it keeps. A short distance north, the 961 acre Cartier Slough Wildlife Management Area holds the same river bottom.

A few miles downstream, the Henry's Fork meets the South Fork of the Snake below the Menan Buttes, two of the largest tuff cones in the world. Ducks and geese work this corridor from October through January. Trumpeter swans winter in the open water and stubble fields around the buttes. Whitetail use the same brush along the slough, moving at first and last