Summer Update

I really wish I had some really awesome trail cam pics of all the big bucks in my area but I don't.  I have one young 8 pointer in the 110 inch range and a bunch of does and fawns.  But to say this is an indicator of a piss poor hunting season on the horizon I feel would be an overstatement.  I've proved year after year that having good bucks on trail cam does not equate to killing a good buck. But then again it would be reassuring to know there's something out there.  Basically I'm headed into the season on an even keel because anything can happen, right? 

There have been reports locally of some dead deer turning up.  EHD is presumably to blame. It's a common disease in deer and cattle in dry years.  Thankfully I haven't seen any yet on the ground I hunt. For more information on the disease follow this link to a 2012 Iowa DNR article. 

http://www.iowadnr.gov/Hunting/DeerHunting/CWDEHDInformation.aspx

Dry weather has been affecting more than the deer.  We have been experiencing a late summer draught and its been taking its toll on my food plots I planted in July.  I just checked them this morning, the clover and brassicas arent burnt out but they aren't exactly thriving.  My soy bean plot is doing ok but if we dont get some rain the pods might not have many beans in them.  

We currently are wrapping up the driest August on record but it's not nearly as bad as last years draught which my 80 year old grandma summed up best when she said, "it feels like hell on earth." 

Squirrel season opens today. If you're going to be hitting the woods be sure to shoot straight and stay hydrated, it's going to be a warm one. 

Hunt smart and stay safe out there!

Final Plot

With the only decent shot at rain forecasted for last Sunday evening, I set out to plant my last food plot for the year.
It's been way too dry lately in our area and our 5 acres of corn is just now starting to tassle!  The time of year for planting my last plot was now & with the rain chance I set out late Sunday evening to put it in.
Our farmer left me some extra room on the backside of the field & I took advantage of it.  My old pal Scott came over to help too.

The crop I selected to plant.

A view of the strip plot I was going to plant.

Here's Scott dragging the harrow to loosen things up prior to planting.

After broadcasting the seed by hand, Scott went back over everything a few times with the roller to make sure we had good seed-to-soil contact.

And then after getting home the rain materialized!  We got close to 2 inches out of this slow moving system.  It was perfect timing and I hope it will insure the success of my last plot.

Hooked for Life

A few days ago we bought Caleb his first rod & reel.  It was a Mickey Mouse combo and looked deadly.  He spent the first couple days practicing off the deck, perfecting his jigging and casting.  Then yesterday we put his newfound skills to the test.

He was fishing the buggy bottoms of the East Fork Des Moines River in Kossuth County.  We were on a camping trip visiting an old friend and his family.  Caleb's first fish was a respectable, yet catch-and-release sized channel catfish.  He caught it on a Mickey Mouse combo with a 12" steel leader, two split shot sinkers, and a gob of worm on a barbed hook.

Patiently waiting.......



Reeling in the monster

Caleb's First Fish....a channel catfish!

Food Plot #1 and #2: DONE!

I got both my plots planted a few weeks ago. The 1st particular plot is my favorite spot to hunt even though its really not a very productive stand.  I think the allure comes from the sights and sounds of hunting this stand, it makes me feel like I'm hunting in a place like you see on the hunting shows and DVDs. 

It's in a small seven acre block of timber but it feels bigger than that.  My stand sits along a winding creek in a tall straight ash tree.  On the other side of the creek is a hard wood ridge and beyond that is crop fields.  In front of the stand is a 1/4 acre clearing I've maintained a food plot in for the last 5 or so years.  I've had white clover, turnips, winter rye, and I even made an attempt at corn which failed miserably due to the severe drought last year.

This year I'm going back to the ol' bread and butter: clover. This year presented some challenges that stood in the way of getting the plot done.  Namely getting to the plot with equipment.  The flash flooding we've encountered this year silted/mudded in the creek crossing and I could not get across with the tractor and disk.  So I loaded up the garden tiller in the truck, used my loading ramps as a makeshift bridge, got across, and got after it! 

Here are a few views of the plot.  You can see my stand in the first pic in the really straight tree behind the tiller off the edge of the plot. The other two pics are from my stand.  

After I got it all tilled up, I cultipacked it to prepare a nice firm seedbed.  My dad had some leftover red clover seed and he came down and broadcasted it onto the plot with a bag seeder.  I then used the same seeder to broadcast some 10-10-10 starter fertilizer and then I cultipacked it again to press the seed into the soil.  

Here's the finished product!  We've done our part and as they say, "It's in God's hands now."  

I got in about a 1/3 acre of soy beans the other night. I used my 6 year old ATV to pull my 60 year old planter. I spaced the beans apart in 30 inch rows and after they emerge I'll give them a shot of roundup to kill any weeds and then broadcast some purple top turnips, dwarf Essex rape, ground hog radishes and some 20-10-10 fertilizer into the beans. Hopefully it all turns out well and I'll have good late season plot to hunt!

The Solon Albino

Well it's no secret anymore that there is an albino doe living west of Solon near the McBride golf course.  Yesterday I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of her and snap a few quick photos.  The zoom isn't the greatest on an iPhone so the photos aren't be best.  Recently there have been several articles about the deer with better photos than I have so you might have some luck doing a google search.  

It's pretty neat to see in person considering the odds are something like 1 out of 100,000 that a deer will be born an albino.  I definitely don't think I'll see another one in my life time but you never know.  

Stay tuned to the blog, both my brother and I should be making some posts about food plots and sharing trail cam pics in the coming weeks! 

Puttin' in the Work

I spent most of the day today doing a lot of food plot maintenance and site prep for a new plot.  Not to mention mowing & packing trails and finishing a small construction project on our property.

I spent about half the morning at Turkey Top.  I finally got the last third of the clover plot mowed with my string trimmer.

This is a section I mowed 10 days ago.  You can see how the clover is doing well since the grass was cut back.  Hopefully after applying Arrest, the grass will be no more and the clover will really take off.

I also found a break in the weather today and suitable conditions to spray the plot with Arrest herbicide.  I only sprayed the part of the plot that I mowed last week.  I saved the part that I mowed today as a "control". 

I then had a small strip of land between the end of the planted corn field and the edge of the timber that'd I'd never done anything with before.  I mowed it down and sprayed with round-up. 

The farmer we rent to left me a pretty wide strip of land between the forest & his first row of corn this year, so I might try to seed a strip plot the entire length of the field.

 

I have a bag of clover still left to be planted, but I kind of want to try something new here.  If anyone actually reads this and has some suggestions, it'd be much appreciated.  The site receives almost full sun the entire day.

Turkey Top update

This past Saturday I had a chance to get up to Turkey Top and check out the progress of my clover plot.  To say the grass had taken it over was an understatement.

However, there is good news.  The clover is thriving under all this grass.

It just needed a good mowing.  Unfortunately this plot's located in an area of our property only accessible by foot.  That makes driving or even pushing a mower to get to it impossible unless accessed from the neighbor's property...but that's another issue all in itself!  So I used my string trimmer and got about 2/3 of the plot mowed down before a storm chased me back to the truck.

In the next week or two I'll be hitting it again, this time with a herbicide called Arrest that's designed to kill only the grasses & leave the clover to thrive. 

From the pictures you can also see that there's a dead Locust tree in the middle of the plot.  I girdled this tree last winter to kill it and it makes a good place for my trailcam.  However, there were some honeysuckle sprouts that grew up in front of the camera since the last time I'd been to the plot.  So my SD card was maxed out with 2905 pictures, of which about 3/4 were honeysuckle shoots blowing in the breeze!  Here's a couple from before the camera got blocked though.

Seems like a popular place to be.

First fawn picture of the year!