Hog Sighting!

Yep, they finally made their way into our area apparently.  I first remember reading about feral hogs in Missouri 3-4 years ago when the Missouri Department of Conservation starting publishing notices about their spread in Missouri and encouraged everyone to shoot them on sight.  I never thought much of it at the time, thinking they would never spread to our part of the state.  Well they've proven me wrong.

After swapping out the memory card on one of my trail cameras last Wednesday, I flipped through the pictures on a point and shoot camera in the field.  Mind you, the screen on the camera is fairly small, but when I came across one particular picture there was only one thing that came to my mind...hog!

I wasn't certain at that point, but after going home and uploading the pictures onto the computer, I had no doubt in my mind.  I sent the picture to one of our MDC contacts to keep them informed they were in our area.  One of the local wildlife biologists was nice enough to meet us at the property over the weekend and provide guidance for identifying sign and tips for eradicating them.  We will start baiting with "soured" corn in front of a trail camera to see if this fella was just passing through or if it's here to stay with some more friends.

CLICK HERE for more information on feral hogs and why the MDC is going through such strong efforts to eliminate them.

Let the battle begin!

Double Down

The first turkey hunt of 2011 turned out to be a successful one after a disappointing season last year...first year in a long time that nobody took a turkey at our farm (might I also add that it was the first year in a long time that I didn't hunt at all...coincidence?).

My dad and I decided to set up together in the double bull blind in hopes of connecting on a couple of longbeards.  We have had multiple birds come in on this same set in years past so we figured we had a decent shot at a double.  I was toting my bow in hopes of arrowing a turkey with the stick and string, and the plan was for me to get an arrow off just before he squeezed the trigger on a second bird.  Well, as always seems to be the case, our feathered friends had a different plan.  As the woods started to wake up, we heard the first unmistakable sound of a gobbler ringing off in the distance.  Minutes later, we found ourselves encompassed by resounding gobbles in all directions.  Only problem was, none of them were where we expected them to be.

We let them do their thing for awhile before I let off a series of soft tree yelps to let them know we were there.  Several different birds responded...two were quite a ways behind us and another other two were much closer on the field edge but at the opposite end, although quite a bit further away than we'd like.  We let the woods continue to wake up and enjoyed the sounds of gobbles for what seemed like an hour but probably only lasted 15-20 minutes.  The woods gradually became quieter as we assumed most of the birds flew down from their roost and were likely with hens.  We still had that one closest tom sounding off to our calls for awhile longer but he eventually became silent as well.  

I decided to go runnin' n gunnin' around 9 to see if I could get a lonesome tom to sound off with no luck.  When I walked back out towards the field, my dad peeked out the back of the blind and saw that a couple birds had snuck up on him and were walking along the field edge towards one of the decoys.  They must have seen/heard me because they headed back into the cover of the woods before he could get a good look at them, but he thought they may have been jakes.  We devised a plan to try and cut them off and made a quick sneak up ahead.  Just before we got to a point in the field, my dad let out a series of yelps and a gobble sounded off in the other direction, probably not more than 100 yds away.  I peaked around the point and sure enough we had cut those other turkeys off as well. 

Things got interesting from here...those two turkeys turned out to be three, and the one gobbling turned out to have a buddy with him too.  So now we have two toms sounding off to our right at every sound we make and getting closer each time, and three "jakes" to our left that are staying quiet.  We didn't have the best cover to hide in but tucked ourselves back into the timber while trying to stay quiet because we knew it was only a matter of time before we were being bombarded from both sides.  I'm thinking that the two that we hadn't seen are going to come in first so I set up in their direction.  Before we knew it, the three to our left came trotting in...no gobbling, no strutting, just walked right at us.  It wasn't until then that we realized these were mature birds and not the jakes we thought they were.  My dad, off to my left, let them get as far as he could hoping to get us both an easy shot.  The closest bird was only 10 ft from the end of his barrel and they were starting to act a little spooky. 

He pulled the trigger on the back bird thinking I had a clear shot at the lead one.  I did, but I also probably would have blown his ear drums out if I took the shot so I waited.  He rolled his bird and the other two fled the scene, with one heading right into my shooting window.  I dropped it thinking we had our double but it popped right up and took off running across the field.  I was standing at this point, and for a brief instant, stood there relaxed and said to myself, "welp, here we go", knowing what was about to ensue.  I took off in a dead sprint after the wounded bird trying to catch up to it before it made it into the timber.  It may come as a surprise, but a turkey can run much faster than I can apparently!  I took a hail mary shot just before it got into the timber and rolled it again but it just kept on going.  I entered shortly behind him and stopped as I tried to figure out which way he went and taking note that I only have one shot left so I better make it count.  The silence must have been too much for him to handle, because he popped up from the tall grass he had hid in just feet away from me and took off running and putting.  I'm not sure what took me so long, maybe he startled me that much, or maybe he was just that fast, but he was already long gone by the time I got my gun shouldered.  And the chase continued...

The next couple of minutes consisted of an all out sprint through the thick timber, over fallen trees, under fallen trees, and through thorny vines.  The turkey was much more agile than I throughout the chase, but I somehow managed to keep up.  He finally made it to some thick brush on the edge of the field where he thought he was safe.  I stopped 10 yds to his side, took a few seconds to catch my breath, and slowly raised my gun to seal the deal.  Definitely not the "easy double" we had thought it was going to be just minutes prior, but eventful nonetheless.  

I dragged the little rascal out into the field, collapsed on the ground, and lay there by the side of my trophy as my dad and his new bionic knee gimped his way down the field where fist bumps and laughs were exchanged.

Winning!!!

Thanks to everyone who voted for me in the trail camera contest…unfortunately, your votes didn’t even count!  There were some flaws in the way the voting system was set up, but most all of the contestants played fair for the most part.  One fella apparently thought he was better than everyone else though and proceeded to register 18+ usernames to vote for himself in the final hours of the contest and conveniently edge me out by one vote to take first place.  I won’t go into detail on how I feel about people like that, but it falls in line with how I feel about trespassers, poachers, and thieves…..

I spoke with the guys that put on the contest throughout the day and they finally decided to throw out all of the public voting and have an un-biased panel of judges to select their favorite photos…thus ensuring the entrants with the best pictures would be awarded the prizes, rather than those with the most friends voting for them.

The results were just posted earlier today and I managed to walk away with the 1^st place prize!  I’ll be the proud new owner of three new trail cameras that will help to feed my addiction: a UWay NT50B, a UWay NX50, and a Little Acorn 5210A.  That’s close to $750 worth of trail cameras!  I’d venture to say that the $550 I spent on the Reconyx camera that took those pictures has more than paid for itself so far.

See the link below for all of the winning photos…some great pictures for sure!

http://www.chasingame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=20877

Chasingame has announced they will be holding another contest that runs through the summer…for more information see the link below.  Time to get the cameras out again in search of that next “lucky” picture!

http://www.chasingame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=20867

Farm Update

I was beginning to have farm withdrawals after not being down there for more than a month.  I finally made it down this past weekend to get a little work and play done.  Right before turning in to the drive to our place, I saw a big ol’ tom in full strut about 60 yds off the road near the edge of a field we often see them.  I stopped and watched as my spring turkey fever instantly went through the roof.  I normally make an effort to not do any calling when I’m not actually hunting, but I couldn’t resist the urge and gave out a series of yelps with my mouth to see if I could get him to gobble.  Each time I yelped, he would turn his body side to side almost as if he was “strutting harder” if that even makes sense.  No gobbles though…

My binocs were in the back of the truck and I was really wishing I would have grabbed the DSLR camera and telephoto lens at this point.  I watched him strut for a good couple of minutes and then he began to break out of strut a little.  Now, I never have seen a pair of turkeys breed in the field before, but I have seen toms attempt to breed the decoys I'm hunting over…and that was exactly what this guy was doing.  I knew what he was doing but couldn’t figure out why for the life of me.  As I continued to watch, it all made sense…shortly after a hen stood up and walked off into the woods with the tom following.  Apparently the hen was sitting down that whole time he was strutting and I just couldn’t see her through the tilled corn stubble.  Quite an exciting start to the day!

Next on my list of things to do was to refresh a couple of mineral licks.  In the past I have always used the Whitetail Institute’s 30-06 mix and/or Trophy Rock’s and have had great success with both.  The cost of replenishing them began to add up though so I decided to switch to a homemade recipe that is available on many places on the internet, which many have probably seen before.  You can get all of the supplies at your local ag and feed store.  The recipe is as follows:

Di-Calcium Phosphate (1 part)

Trace Mineral Salt (2 parts)

Stock Salt (1 part)

Be sure to not mix the ingredients until you are ready to pour it into the lick.  I use a couple of 5 gallon buckets to mix and pour the mix, then dump some water over the mix after adding it to the lick site if it’s dry.  Our farm and the word dry don’t really go together so there’s normally already water in the lick, in which case I just mix it in real good with my boots.

I’ve had a Reconyx and Scoutguard camera over my main lick for the past month with the intent of doing a side-by-side comparison between the two cameras.  Well, the Reconyx took 1,473 pictures and the Scoutguard only took 50.  Obviously the Reconyx won this battle but something obviously wasn’t working right on the Scoutguard.  I pulled it and took it home for some troubleshooting.  I was using an off-brand memory card and hoping that was the cause of the problems, otherwise I may have to send it in...again.

The lick has been getting a lot of action…mainly from some big doe family groups, but also from several bucks that are already starting to sprout some velvet.  The main lick is in a heavy doe family area and the does normally kick the bucks out of the area here in a month or two when they are getting ready to give birth.  It may sound crazy, but I firmly believe it to be the truth.  I get many pictures of does kicking bucks away from the lick that time of year every year.  And then the number of buck pictures quickly drop off to nearly nothing through the summer months while they are raising the fawns.

After replenishing the licks, Riley and I aimlessly walked through the woods hoping to stumble on a shed or some mushrooms with no luck.  I carried a crow call with me and gave out some calls throughout the walk to see if I could get a lonely tom to shock gobble.  The winds were blowing 20+ mph though so I didn’t expect much out of it but was worth of try.  This technique works great and has helped me to bag some late morning gobblers in past seasons.

We did stumble on a climbing stand that was left 15+ ft in a tree on our walk through the woods.  Now, for those of you that know how climbing stands work, I think you can guess what must have happened here.  It’s obvious the stand slipped/broke and the guy fell down to the ground.  There’s no other way to get down once up there unless they used climbing sticks and just left the stand.  But judging how the bottom piece is dangling there, my bet is someone fell.  This was just off our property line on land I also have permission to hunt.  Nobody else has permission to hunt this area that I know of, but we do have some locals that own an extremely small tract nearby that roam the entire area like they own it all.  My guess is it was one of them, and I hate to admit it, but a little grin came across my face when I saw this.  We’ve run these guys off our land many times and have had trail cameras and stands stolen.  I do hope no one was seriously hurt, but I'm sure they at least had to change their pants after a fall like that.  It looks like the stand has been there awhile but I was in this area before last season and never noticed it…perhaps I just didn’t see it?  I'm going to mention it to the farmer to see if anyone else has permission to hunt his land for the past several years.  

Before we headed out we made a quick walk through the tract of timber we had been doing the TSI.  I was happy to see the spring storms and heavy winds brought down a lot of the trees that were hung up.  I snapped a few pictures on my cell phone of some of the damage we made before heading home.

Need Your Votes!

I entered a couple recent trail camera pictures into a photo contest hosted by Chasingame.com, and am in the running to win one of the top two prizes…which means more trail cameras!  I’d really appreciate anyone that can register and vote before Sunday...ideally for me of course but vote as you see fit!  The process is simple, and don’t worry, you won’t get any spam mail from registering.  If you’re in to trail cameras, you might as well stick around because Chasingame is well known for being the leading organization in trail camera testing and reviews.  I have learned a wealth of information from the website and the forum, and it helped me make my decision to end up with the trail camera models I have today.  There’s some other great pictures to look at that were submitted by others for the contest as well!

To register, CLICK HERE and enter your information.

Then, CLICK HERE to get to the page with all of the contest entries and vote.  I go by the username buxndux and my name is the second on the list.

Be sure to shoot me an email at burbenska@gmail.com letting me know you voted for me so I can thank you!

Here’s my two entries into the contest, had a tough time narrowing it down to these two…