Weekend at the land

Well, I got down to the land over the weekend to do some tractor work, turkey hunt and whatever else I could think of to do.

I struck out on the turkey hunting, although I did get 2 gobblers within about 30 - 40 yards but I just wasn't able to close the deal on them. I saw them both and probably should have taken a shot at one, but I thought he was going to come closer, and instead he decided to go farther away so I never did take a shot at him.

I did shoot a coyote that was stalking in on my turkey decoy on Saturday morning though. That was pretty neat. Saw several deer and one got as close as 5 yards away before it saw me so that was cool. Overall things seem to be doing well down on the land although the pond is really low though, I hope we start to get some good rain down there soon!

Well, back to the tractor. From where I typically sit and where I plan to build a nice shooting house on the top of the hill I can see pretty good once the leaves fall off the mesquite trees, but before that, spotting a deer through the brush can be pretty challenging. Last year I cut some narrow shooting lanes through some of the brush so I could at least see the deer when they crossed through them. The deer ended up using them as trails as well so it seemed like a big success. This year I decided to widen one of them to be big enough to pull my grain drill down (14') and on another I not only widened it, but ran it all the way through where I had stopped at some big trees in the past.

Tractors really are amazing machines in the amount of work that they can do. In just a couple hours I cleared brush and trees that would have taken weeks if not months to do by hand. Mesquite is very hard wood so I would just raise my loader up about 5 or 6 feet high on the tree and push and generally they would snap right at the base of the tree and fall over. Then I would push them out of the way with the loader and shred the smaller brush with my mower.

Things were going pretty smoothly until all the sudden my loader bucket wouldn't tilt up or down anymore and every time I tried to move it a spurt of hydraulic oil would come out the top of they control valves! I was working the tractor pretty hard, but I don't think that had anything to do with it when it was all said and done, but we'll get to that later.

Here's how it looked before I got started. It wasn't taken from the exact same spot, but pretty close. It was taken from more of a wide angle though so it's not the exact perspective, but you should get a pretty good idea, pretty thick stuff.

Here's the end result of the work. There was one rather large stump I wasn't able to move so I just left it there for now. You can see it about 1/3rd of the way from the bottom on the right side of the shooting lane. I still should be able to get my grain drill through there though. I plan on discing it and planting wheat on it this fall. The end of the shooting lane is about 250 yards from my stand. I still might cut one limb off of the tree that pokes out into the shooting lane about midway down it.

Here's the other shooting lane. Here is what it looked like before, I kind of just zigged and zagged through around the trees. Last year this was a huge benefit during the hunting season to be able to see deer and pigs crossing through here.
And here's what it looks like now. I didn't zig and zag around the trees this time!
I also plan on discing and planting wheat on it this fall.

I got finished at about 6:30 on Saturday evening and put everything up and went back to my hunting blind and at about 7:30 a doe and fawn came walking down the new shooting lane to the west. Looks like it will be a resounding success, especially if I get it planted in wheat for this fall.

I'll make another post soon on my tractor repairs.

Nathan