Setting the Table

My dad and our newly adopted partners have been hard at work the past couple of weeks getting things all set for the upcoming season, while I've been stranded at home studying for the P.E. exam.  I've been living through their reports and pictures in the meantime.  Opening has been mowed in front of our blind in the corn field, holes and open strips mowed in our moist-soil unit, levees and roads mowed, downed timber from our TSI project has been piled up just awaiting for a match to be thrown on it, other two timber holes mowed enough to float decoys, and.......the pump fired up!  Now other than hauling down decoys and covering blinds, just need to wait for the fields to fill (over 50% done already) and our feathered friends to show up.  Hopefully the weather conditions will cooperate this year and make this a season for the books!

(click on an image then use arrow keys to view the full size pics)

Trail Cam Timelapses & Videos from 2011

Being that I've yet to make it 20' up a tree with bow in hand this year, I've been trying to fulfill my deer fix by looking through some of last years' pictures.  Just put together a few timelapse videos of cameras that were out on trails last year.

A few trail timelapses from my Reconyx workhorses...

Here's a select few videos I got off of a scrape camera...this set took more videos than I have time to look through!

And here's a cool video over another scrape with a couple dinks feeling each other out and then a nice buck I was after last year that had a body the size of a horse when he was all rutted out. Be sure to have your volume up for this video. The last bit of it is a sequence in the predawn hours during the rut where the deer were in a frenzy....must have been a doe in heat somewhere nearby. Not a lot of action directly in front of the camera that you can see, but you can hear it all....grunting, fighting, and snorting. The kicker to this video is that Jason was in a stand less than 50 yds away from this camera just an hour or two after this all went down.

Introducing "Petey's Poems"

Little did we know that we have a couple Robert Frost wannabe's in our hunting circle who really showed their true "talents" last season.  Click on the link at the top of the page to check it out.  If we are lucky, they may even publish a few more poems this season.

Corn ! ! ! !

The blog has been inactive for awhile...but the work hasn't stopped!  Season's getting near and things are starting to fall into place.

After many years of preparation and anticipation, we've finally got some corn in the ground!  Unfortunately, we picked the year with one of the worst droughts and heat waves on record.  Miraculously, despite having next to no rain and temps above 100, it has somehow turned out to be a decent crop so far.  Being in the bottoms saved us on this one, as most all of the corn on the uplands in the area hasn't fared so well.  Still desperate for some rain to take us into season, but at minimum we will at least have something that looks like corn from above!  Better yet, the borrow pits bordering the corn filled in nicely with a heavy stand of barnyard grass (wild millet) and smartweed!

Also knocked down our thriving cocklebur crop in the other field and put up some flapgates to keep any floods (yeah right) off the corn until it's matured.

Check out the "Management" album in the Image Gallery above for a few more pictures.