March is over already!

Well, I figured I better get at least two posts in March so I'll get this one in on the last day!

I've been back down to the land a couple times this month since Cathy was out of town anyway. I got a ton of new trail camera pictures including several of this beautiful buck!



There are a ton more pictures on my website photo gallery with the newest pictures starting on page 14 and going onto page 15.
Link to Trail Camera Pictures

Eli is growing up fast and turned 15 months old this month. He is at 90% for his age for height and right in the middle for weight. Work has been very busy but I guess that's a good thing in some aspects.

I trapped 6 more raccoons to make a total of 15 in the month of March, I think that means that I had more than my fair share to begin with! I'm still getting pictures of them on my trail camera pictures. I trapped 1 skunk also. I shot 2 wild pigs this month as well and am going to try to make a ham out of the last one I shot.

Techincally there are only 2 more weeks of busy season but some of my audits are going to run a little later than that I'm afraid. I still am hoping to get some work done on the land in April (planting sorghum on 33 acres and planting 5 acres in food plots for wildlife) and around the house as well putting in a lawn for Eli to play in and some trees that some friends are giving us.

Well I think that gets me up to date for the most part.

Nathan

Raccoon Trapping

I've known for the last year that I have way too many raccoons on the land in Fisher county. I have one picture on a trail camera with 13 raccoons in it under one of the feeders. Raccoons are also big nest raiders and if you have a lot of raccoons you will probably end up with fewer quail and turkey. I bought a cage trap this past summer and set it several times but never was successful at catching a raccooon. I did some research online and found a neat trap called "'Lil Grizz Get'rz". They are made specifically for trapping raccoons as they have to reach their hand in a little pipe and then pull back on the trigger to spring the trap. They are also very easy to setup and I ended up buying a couple. I asked around some more and several folks said I would never make a dent in the raccoon population trapping a couple at a time so I ended up buying a dozen more of them. I wasn't able to get out right away but this past weekend I got to go out and I set up the 14 traps. I set them out about 4 in the afternoon and baited 8 of them with sardines and 6 of them with marshmellows (I read about this online and about 1/2 the folks recommended sardines and 1/2 the folks recommended marshmellows so I figured I would try both). Well, I caught 9 raccoons overnight! 7 of them were caught on sardines and only 2 on marshmellows so I guess I'll be using sardines in the future. The sardines are easier to use anyway, they just make somewhat of a stink! I was very happy with the results for my first time trapping.

I got some trail camera pictures of a new buck too. I'm going to call him "Stickers" because he almost looks like a cactus he has so many points.

You can see from the raccoons in the picture that one other benefit from reducing the raccoon population will be that I should save some money on my feeding bill. I think I had more raccoons eating out of the feeder than I had deer! Oh well, I think that's about it. Getting to where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on my busy season. Nathan

Hello... Hello... Is anybody out there?

Okay, I knew it was going to be tough to keep my posts going during this time of the year and I was right. Busy, Busy, Busy!

Well it looks like I'm not going to be planting the apple trees after all. After spending all the time and effort to line everything out and even dig the holes that I was going to plant them in, I actually decided it would be good to go inspect the trees up close and personal instead of driving by on the highway and looking at them about 100 yards away. Here is a picture of one of them.



Well, I should have looked at them much earlier! The trees were very neglected and after taking some pictures and posting them on a discussion board the consensus was that I would be better off starting from scratch with 1 year old trees than I would be trying to transplant the trees I was planning on. Sure they were big, but due to the neglect they were not going to produce many apples and were in such need of pruning that they would take as long to get pruned into shape as it would take a new tree to grow from scratch and start producing apples. I was pretty disappointed because I had thought this would be a perfect way to get a jump start on some habitat improvements on my property. From a long term perspective though, those trees were never going to become mature producing apple trees. Oh well, I might still put a few smaller trees out this year or I might just use my tractor to cover up the big holes that I dug!

Eli is getting to be quite the handful lately. He is running everywhere (I don't think he knows how to walk, he ALWAYS runs) and pretty much getting into everything. He is nearly always happy though and really seems to enjoy being outside as much as possible. I'm really looking forward to the years ahead and spending time with him in the outdoors.

Hope everything is going well for anyone reading this. Maybe I'll do better posting in March and April. I've got some big plans for work on the property coming up in late April, lots of planting and plowing.

That's it for now. Nathan

Where did January go?!!!

Well, January flew by in record time!

I started a diet and have lost about 10lbs so far with about 10 more to go.

I was able to go out to the land last Saturday afternoon and check the cameras and fill the feeders. Nothing too exciting on the trail cameras, I have several young bucks that are regularly visiting and I had a few pictures of a mature buck and that is for sure an improvement over last year when I only saw 1 buck on camera until October. Here is the nicest buck I got a picture of this visit.




I have 30 - 5 foot square holes dug for the apple trees I'm buying in a couple weeks. I have a guy lined up to dig them up with a backhoe and I'm expected to end up with somewhere between 30 and 40 trees! They are 7 year old apple trees in several different varieties and most are already producing apples. I'm getting a good deal on them but the trick is going to be getting them dug up and transplanted without losing too many of them. I'm planting 18 of them around the house and the rest of them down at the land in 2 different groups. I'll hopefully have some pictures on my next post.

Work is going good, a little hectic but just a couple more months of busy season and then it will slow back down a little hopefully.

That's about it on my end.

Nathan

Work, Work, Work...

Well, as expected I'm slowing down on posting updates. Partly because I've been busy at work, and partly because since I've been busy I don't have anything exciting to post on.

I'm working on buying some apple trees to put around our house and possibly to put some down on the land for wildlife attraction, but as mentioned before, I've been pretty busy so it looks like it will be February before I get anything really going on it.

Other than that everything is going well. Eli is walking very well now and even running although he usually ends up falling alot when he runs.

That's it for now.

Nathan

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year everyone!!!

Nothing too exciting around here so far this year. We didn't make it until midnight on New Year's Eve, but we had a good lunch on New Years day and ate plenty of Black Eyed Peas for good luck.

Eli is really starting to walk well now. He's had several excursions where he walks 20 or 30 feet without stopping to hold onto anything. He still falls some, but he has figured out how to break his fall for the most part and doesn't seem to let falling down deter him any. He's enjoying playing with all his new toys and we have been trying to take plenty of pictures and video tapping him as he meets his new milestones. At some point we are going to have to take the hours of video that we have and edit it and put it on a dvd or something.

No new hunting stories to tell. Cathy is pretty tired of me hunting and with work picking up like it is I really don't have the time to do any hunting anyway. I still want to try to make it down the the land once a month or so to check my cameras and check on everything else, but probably won't get to do any real hunting. I'll bring my rifle of course because there is always a chance to see some pigs and they really need thinned out. Hopefully my new protien feeder will still be okay when I make it back down there. I will probably bring some hog panels and try to get a low fence built around the feeder that the deer can easily jump over but the pigs won't be able to.

I'm going to try to start losing some weight starting when I get back home on the 5th or 6th. I'll be doing the introductory part of the Atkins diet for a couple weeks and trying to get a jump start on getting back to where I want to be. I'm really only about 20lbs over what I want to be so hopefully I can get there quickly and then work on maintaining it after that. I also want to start working out sometime soon probably after daylight savings time starts to try to get in good shape for elk hunting in Wyoming this fall if I get drawn.

I'm out on the road right now and Cathy is visiting her sister near Ft. Worth. It has been fairly cold in Lubbock lately and it has been very dry also. Hopefully we will get some rain soon.

That's about it for now.

Nathan

Holidays and Turkey Hunting

Well, we spent much of the last week on the road traveling to see Cathy's family.

I was able to hunt Sunday evening and Monday morning and was hoping to shoot some pigs but didn't see any. Nothing of tremendous interest on the trail cameras, a few good shots of some younger bucks and a bunch more pictures of pigs but they sure seem to have me figured out. I saw 6 deer on Sunday evening and 4 deer on Monday morning but didn't want to shoot any until next year when I have my population figured out better.

On Monday morning I busted a flock of turkeys off their roost on the way to my blind and they scattered everywhere. The rest of the morning they were trying to group back up and I saw and heard several groups at 75 to 100 yards away and then a straggler came by at 43 yards and stopped right in front of me and streched it's neck out and I couldn't resist and I shot it with my rifle in the neck. It dropped right there and with the shot in the neck I didn't ruin any meat shooting it with the rifle. In Texas you can shoot a either sex Turkey in the fall season with any legal weapon. We ended up taking the Turkey with us and cooked it for Christmas dinner with Cathy's family. It was a fairly young turkey and it ended up tasting pretty good.

Later in the morning I saw 2 coyotes just hanging out on a hill about 275 yards away but I didn't take a shot at them. In retrospect I should have tried it, I have target practiced out to 300 yards with fairly decent accuracy and at one point one of the coyotes even layed down for a while so I would have been able to take my time with the shot, but I kept thinking they might come closer but they never did and then they went down into the brush and I never saw them again. If I see them again I'll try the shot.

Eli had a good Christmas and got pretty spoiled. He is starting to walk pretty decently now and goes about 10 or 15 feet at a time now. He had a cold for the last couple weeks but he is about over it now so that is really good too. He got a wagon and some other stuff but we haven't let him play with them outside yet because it has been pretty cold and we don't want to risk him getting sick again.

I'm getting pretty busy at work, it's rapidly getting to be that time of year for me. Nothing else exciting that I can think of.

That's it for now. Nathan