Busy Week!

Well, last week was a pretty busy week for me. It started off with us coming to an agreement with our neighbors (at the house) to buy 8.8 acres of land from them. They have 17.4 acres now and don’t think they need that much land, so we’re going to buy it to keep from having any other neighbors move in. Probably paying too much for it, but it is the tract that is closest to our house so this gives us a nice buffer zone now. Hopefully we will be able to close on it within the next month or so. That will put us up to 51 acres of land around the house.

I scraped my hand while cleaning my fish tank on Sunday, and didn’t think much about it since I’ve done the same thing dozens of times, but the next day it was starting to look infected. By Tuesday it was pretty bad and my entire hand was swollen and red. Wednesday morning it was even worse so I went to the Dr. He prescribed 2 different antibiotics and it really didn’t start to get much better until Friday evening. It’s almost back to normal now.

Watching the weather forecasts, there was a 50% chance of rain on Wednesday so I decided to go down and plant the 33 acres of wheat on Tuesday. My hand was too sore to do much with at work (I was barely able to type) but I felt like I would be able to drive the tractor with it. Last time I was down there planting I had put 600lbs of wheat in the grain drill thinking that it would stay dry instead of hauling it back and forth to the trailer like I did with the other 900lbs. I checked it and everything looked good so I started planting. After running about 5 acres I checked and on one side hardly any wheat had gone through the drill and on the other side it was about 1/2 gone. I was messing with some settings so I thought somehow it wasn't set right so I went around a few more times and the one side still wasn't planting much and so I dug down in the seed and discovered big patches of sprouted seed down in the bottom of the drill clogging several of the openings. Evidently some water had gotten into the drill and puddle up in the bottom and caused the problem. I cleaned it out and everything worked fairly well from there out.

After an hour, my tractor started to run poorly, and it seemed like a fuel delivery problem. I normally pull the grain drill in 6th gear without any issues, and it was bogging down badly in 6th gear and even struggling in 5th gear a little. I cleaned the radiator, and air filter, then messed with the fuel bleed valve and then cleaned my fuel filter and that seemed to solve the problem for a while. I didn’t really have much to clean the filter with though. I was just taking it out and blowing through it – you gotta love the taste of diesel fuel in the morning! The second time I cleaned it I dropped it in the dirt. Not a good thing. I ended up having to finish in 5th gear and even dropped into 4th a couple times. At less than $3 and a whopping 2 minute change out time, I probably should keep a spare fuel filter with the tractor.

I finally got done planting about 30 minutes after dark with 1,500lbs of wheat seed in the ground. I ended up running out of seed with about 1 acre to go in the middle of the field, but I am planning on planting that in something else this spring anyway. I’m actually starting to get the settings on the drill figured out. The seed bed was pretty ugly (I just had them disc in all the standing vegetation including tumbleweeds, old sorghum, etc.) but hopefully it will turn out alright. After missing the first rain in the forecast, it rained on it pretty good late Wednesday night, and it was a good thing I got it planted because it would have been too wet to plant it this weekend like I had planned on originally.

Okay, I’ve written a novel already and no pictures!

I still had other projects to get done on the land so I still went down there this weekend. Friday worked perfectly, with me getting down there and sitting in the new blind for a little over an hour and then shooting a 150lb boar pig. I stayed in the blind until after dark and saw several coyotes (they were 400+ yards away), and a few deer, but nothing that would have been a shooter even if it had been deer season (it opens November 7th). We still have a LOT of pig in the freezer, and my neighbors to the north of me were there at their hunting camp so I asked them if they wanted the pig and they said sure. That saved me from messing with it and I didn't want to waste it, so I gave it to them. It should be a good eater. Hunted again Saturday morning and not much going on. Shot at a coyote with my .22 Mag, and I think I hit it, but it ran off. Put up a new tripod stand on the edge of the fields that I planted a few weeks ago, most of the deer activity I’ve been seeing is on those fields so I think that will be a hot spot in a couple weeks still. While I was working on it a coyote came out into the field about 100 yards away and I was behind some cactus so it just saw some movement but couldn’t figure out what it was so it came over to investigate. It got about 25 yards away and I stood up and shot at it with my .22LR pistol, but I missed it. I put some camo netting on it to help it blend in and I think the end result was pretty good.
I need to remember if I put another one of these up to put most of the netting on it when it is still on the ground though, it took about the same amount of time to put the netting on it after it was in the air than it did to assemble the entire tripod on the ground! Of course the 25+ mph wind didn’t help much.

Here’s a picture of it from the other side of the small field. You can see the food plot is looking really good for only 3 weeks old. It is amazing what some rain can do!The next project was finishing my gate at the very front of the property. At one point in it’s life, one acre in the very northeast corner was sold separately from the rest of the property. It has a fence around it but no gate to keep people from driving into that corner of the property. When I first bought the place I had a trail camera stolen and had a few indications that people were trespassing and I’ve been meaning to put a gate in for a couple years now. Gates went on sale at Tractor Supply and I bought some and actually put the gate in a month or so ago, but then noticed some tire tracks just driving around the gate so I ended up putting a fence in. When it was all said and done I probably only put in 75 to 100 feet of fence, but it was still some pretty hard work. I only put in 3 strand barbwire since the goal is more to keep people out rather than keeping cattle. Hard to see the barbwire in the picture, but it actually didn’t turn out that bad.
Sunday was the last day of fall dove season so I went out to the pond at the house for an hour or so right before dark and ended up getting 5 birds. If I was a better shot I would probably limit out every time! Our dog “Baby” who is a full blooded Rottweiler goes with me and is actually getting to be a pretty good retriever. I ended up with 41 birds for the fall season. We have a winter season over the holidays for the first time this year so I still might get to 50 before the end of the year.

Overall it was a pretty busy week. I’m actually starting to think I might be actually getting older and should slow down a little bit!

That's it for now. Nathan

Electric Cart Demo - Food Plot Checkup

Well, I made an unscheduled trip down to the land today to try out a lifted electric golf cart. I saw an ad on craigslist for them talking about a big federal tax credit on them (64% of the cost of the carts I'm looking at) and started checking on it and everything seems legitimate on it. To qualify for the tax credit, it has to be street legal so it has a horn, blinkers, lights, etc., etc. I have kind of toyed around with the idea of buying an old golf cart and doing a bunch of work on it and then using it down on the land, but this ends up cheaper than about any option I was looking at and you end up with a brand new street legal cart with a 4 year warranty. Top speed is only 25mph but that's plenty for what I'll be using it for.

I test drove one at the dealership and was pretty impressed, but I wasn't sure if it would make it up the big hill to my hunting blind down on the land. I test drove it at my house and tried to get it to climb out of the caliche pit, but that was a little beyond it's capabilities (I'm not sure our 4x4 pickup could have made it where I was trying the cart). I've been waffling on whether or not to buy it and the salesman told me that I could take the cart down to the land and find out for sure if it would make it up the hill or not, so I decided to take him up on the offer.

My company car and the little trailer got called into duty again to haul the cart down to the land. The cart isn't huge, but it is quite a bit bigger than a regular ATV.

Here's a closer view of the cart on the trailer. It fit pretty well, but the front rack was a tiny bit too tall to fit under the front deflector on the trailer so I couldn't pull it all the way forward on the trailer. I still ended up with enough tongue weight, but I may go ahead and remove that deflector since I've never really liked it anyway. It also makes it a little harder to strap the cart down since you can't just loop over the front axle and ratchet it down.

Here's what I brought it down there to find out whether it could handle. Hills never look as steep in pictures as they do in real life, but you can get a general idea. I always put the pickup in 4wd to go up this hill, I don't think it would make it otherwise. The cart is 2wd and although they do make a 4wd version, it is much more expensive and doesn't qualify for the federal tax credit. Anyway, the goal of this trip was to see if the 2wd cart would make it up the hill. My 2wd ATV can go up it so I was hoping the cart could make it up it as well. Long term, I'm thinking that Eli and I would be riding to the top of the hill and getting into the hunting blind in the early morning instead of walking in the dark with a 5 or 6 year old. Well, it made it! Didn't have much of a problem at all. It felt a little light in the front end at the top, but the front wheels never left the ground so that was good. If it was wet it might not make it up there, but that's pretty rare around here!Here's another shot of the cart at the top of the hill with the new hunting blind in the background.
Besides running around in the dark in stealth mode (the electric cart is VERY quiet compared with an ATV) the other use for the cart will be chores. The back seat folds down to haul things. I'll probably build some type of a wooden box to set on the platform for times when I will be working down on the land. I'm thinking that it will be hauling a chainsaw, lopers, rope, weedeater, etc. when I'm down there doing habitat improvements. For now it was hauling a new tripod stand that I'm going to be putting up.
So, the demo was pretty much a resounding success. The cart has a few creaks here and there that I think I can fix pretty easily, but overall I was very impressed. The demo version is in camo, but the solid color versions are $400 cheaper so I'm planning on getting a solid color one. I had pretty much decided on black, but the only negative is that they are selling so well that during the time I was debating on buying it, all of the carts that are coming in at the end of October are already sold so it looks like I won't be getting one until mid November at the earliest.

While I was down there I was able to check on the food plots that I planted a couple weeks ago and I was very happy with how well they were doing. Here's one of the shooting lanes that I planted with the fancy mix with some added winter peas and clover.
Here's a close up of the plot. It looks like the clover and alfalfa are getting a good start.
Not the best picture, but here's the shooting lane from the blind up on the hill. Before I cleared the shooting lane, animals could move through without ever being seen.
Here's the smaller field that I planted in the Turner Seed Fall Deer Mix. The greener spot is where I added some extra rye, oats and clover on top of the mix. On this field I had the drill set too low and had to go over it several times.
Here's the 13 acre field that is planted in pretty much just a Rye/Oats mix. I added a tiny bit of winter peas to it, but not enough to probably matter. The tripod stand that I'm putting in will be in a pinch point between these 2 fields.
Part of what I'm planning on doing this spring is planting switchgrass for the deer to use for bedding cover. I've been researching out different varieties and trying to find some that will grow with our limited rainfall, but still get 5 or 6 feet tall. It is crazy that Johnson grass is growing that tall in this field and I didn't even plant it. I'm curious if it will stay standing this winter or if it will get knocked down.
In my last post I noted the bumper crop of berries on the chittamwood trees and it looks like the pigs are enjoying them for sure. I noticed that they are falling to the ground now and based on this it looks like the are pretty much eating them exclusively right now.
Always good to end a post with a picture of a big 'ol pile of pig poop, but that's about it for now. I still need to get back down there and plant the 33 acres of wheat and I may spend the weekend and try to thin the pig population down as well.

That's it for now. Nathan

Planting Part 1 - Seed Mixes

Well, I tried to come up with a catchy title, but couldn't come up with anything.

I had originally planned on getting my food plots planted before I left on my elk hunting trip, but I wasn't able to get to it, so that was on the agenda for this weekend. I had a total of 49 acres to plant so I had plenty of work ahead of me. I was doing several different styles of planting and mixes, but when it was all said and done I had 2,650lbs of seed to plant!

My utility trailer that I haul my tractor on is rated at 7,000lbs and there is no way I could haul all that seed plus my tractor and stay even close to the weight limit so I ended up getting the seed and hauling it down there on Friday afternoon. Here's my company car pulling our little trailer with 2,650lbs of seed on it. Saturday morning I loaded up the tractor and headed down to get the seed in the ground. I've added a weight distributing hitch and that helped a bit, but I think I'm still sagging a little too much in the back. The tractor and loader weighs around 4,500lbs and the mower on the back weighs almost 1,000lbs so with the weight of the trailer it ends up pretty close to the 7,000lb capacity.
Here's a little less than 1/2 of the seed. 450lbs of Rye and 450lbs of Oats and 200lbs of Turner Seed's Fall Deer Mix. Not in the picture but I also put in 50lbs of a clover/alfalfa mix that I got from Browning Seed in Plainview.
Here's what Turner Seed's Fall Deer mix looks like out of the bag. It includes Wheat 14%, Oats 14%, Rye 14%, Barley 12% and winter peas 14%, plus a little tiny bit of hairy vetch 5%, purple top turnips 5%, alfalfa 5%, madrid clover 5%, hubam clover 5%, arrowleaf clover 2.5% and essex rape 2.5%.
When I was at Browning Seed picking up the rest of my seed, I talked with them about what I was doing and they suggested adding some alfalfa and clover mix to the rye and oats that I was planting. They were very helpful and mixed me up a 50lb batch with 25lbs of Alfalfa and 3 different types of clover. I forgot to write down what the different types of clover were, but I remember 1 was arrowleaf and I think one of the others was white dutch. Here's what their mix looked like. The alfalfa and clover is VERY small seed.
In an attempt to make a food plot on the shooting lanes that would be impossible to resist, I added about 1olbs of winter peas that I had left over from a couple years ago and 10lbs of the clover mix from Browning Seed to 50lbs of Turner Seed's Fall deer mix. I put this down on about a 1/2 acre so I'm hoping it turns out irresistible! Here's the clover mix and winter peas added to the Turner Seed Fall Deer mix.
And here it is after mixing it all together. You can see there are more peas and if you look really close you can see more of the clover and alfalfa.
The alfalfa and clover is so tiny that I was worried about using it in my spin spreader/seeder so I decided to mix it in with 50lbs of rye and 50lbs of oats to try to have a little more control over spreading it out. I broadcast it out over the best looking places on the 2 fields I was going to plant.
Here's the tractor with the broadcast spreader hooked up and ready to go. I only used it for the shooting lanes and to spread the alfalfa/clover mix with the rye and oats. Talking with the guys at Browning seed, I broadcast the alfalfa/clover mix first then went over it with the grain drill when I was planting the straight rye/oat mix.
After I broadcast the seed on the shooting lanes I ran the disc over them very lightly. Maybe a couple inches at the most. This cleaned up the last little bit of stuff that was growing on them and lightly buried the seed. The forecast showed 80% chance of rain so I was counting on it to pack the seed in so I didn't go over it with anything to pack it down.
On a small 2 1/2 acre field, I planted 150lbs of the Turner Seed fall deer mix with the grain drill. I keep messing with the settings, but I had it set way too low. I ended up going around the field 3 times before I got it all put down. It made for a nice clean looking field though!
After finishing that, I pulled the plates off the other side of the drill so that it was as wide open as you can possibly get it. I loaded it up with 500lbs of Rye and Oats (plus about 20lbs of winter peas) and mixed it up and got after it. I only paid $250 for this grain drill a couple years ago and it is about a 1950 model, but it really has done well for me. I've spent about $50 for some parts and done some very minor repairs to it, but overall I have been very pleased with it. Here it is loaded up with seed and ready to go.
I was planting a 13 acre field per the FSA but by the time you actually look at the field on paper vs. in real life I think it is really only about 12 acres because of one area that has grown back over with grass and one area that has an erosion problem. The drill is 14' wide and you can cover some ground fairly quickly. I pull it in 6th gear and using the GPS it shows about 5mph when running at normal speed. I disced this field almost 2 months ago and then sprayed it with roundup 3 weeks ago. Overall I thought it was pretty clear of weeds and grass, but there were a few spots that either I missed with the roundup or it came back before I got back down there to get it planted. Here's a view from the drivers seat when I was running the drill. Pretty easy to tell where I'd been and what still needed planted.
With the drill opened all the way up, I got it all planted on the first pass. I ended up putting down 800lbs of the rye/oats mix for about 66lbs per acre. A little heavier than I wanted to, but better too much than too little and having to go back over it again and again. I do need to figure the settings out a little better before planting the big field though.

Speaking of the big field (33 acres), it is still waiting to be be disced and planted. I was trying to line someone up to disc it for me since it would take me 3 or 4 days with my tractor, but I couldn't get anyone lined up in time so I could get it planted this weekend. I was also pushing the rain and actually just got done with the 13 acre field before it started to rain. I loaded 600lbs of wheat into the grain drill where it should stay dry and then put the other 900lbs of wheat in the pickup and hauled it to the trailer just as it started to rain. I got plenty of excersise before it was all said and done. I unloaded 2,650lbs of seed off the trailer, then put 1,750lbs of it into the broadcast spreader and grain drill, then loaded 900lbs of seed back onto the pickup and then unloaded it into the trailer. I still get the fun chore of loading that 900lbs of seed back into the pickup and then into the grain drill sometime in the near future.

It rained enough that it would have been sloppy trying to get the big field disced and planted, but not enough to do much good for anything else. Right now the forecast has a chance of rain every day the rest of the week, so hopefully it will get it watered in good.

Overall I was pretty happy with getting what I did planted before the rain. The remaining field has to get planted by December 1st for the CRP program that I enrolled it, but I'm really not planning on hunting that field so if I don't get it planted for a couple weeks that should be okay

A couple other pictures of stuff that I thought were neat. I thought this spider web looked pretty cool with the rain/mist on it. These are Chittamwood (Bumelia lanuginosa) berries. I have a lot of these trees on the property and this is the first time they have had many berries on them. Not sure how it will affect wildlife usage though.
Last picture of this post. I saw these growing in some brush. I think it was some type of gourd on a vine that just happened to grow up in the brush. The fruit is about the size of a cherry tomato. Anyone know what it is?
Lots of information if you actually care about any of this stuff. Hopefully all the effort will be worth it in another month or so!

Well, that's it for this post. Nathan

Struck out....

Well, I wasn't overly optimistic going into it, but we pretty much struck out elk hunting this year. The weather wasn't very good for hunting elk, but it turned out to be really nice for Cathy and Eli with the average daytime temperatures in the mid 70's and although we had a few cool nights (one night it got down to 27) it warmed up pretty quick once the sun came up.

We spent the first 4 days hunting outside Yellowstone Park where my friends have hunted for many years. We had a couple good opportunities, but didn't connect on them. My friends son had a decent shot at a nice bull, but missed. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures of that area from this year.

Boone Creek. I really thought this was a neat place. The picture is deceiving though, the willows in the bottom are 10 to 12 feet tall. Sunset on the mountain. We heard wolves howling this night as well. The only drawback to this was that we had to hike down a pretty steep slope in the dark.
After hunting there for 4 days and seeing more hunters than elk and not even hearing an elk the last 2 days, we decided to try a different area. Some of the hunting areas south of Jackson were opening up a couple weeks early so we went down there and scouted around on Friday to be ready for the opener on Saturday.

Here are some pictures of the area that I was scouting out. We didn't end up hunting there on Saturday but it was some pretty country. I put my 4 wheeler to the test on a few of these "roads". Pictures never do justice to how steep things are.

This is a closer picture of the ridge line down below in the first picture. Cathy had ridden with me on the 4 wheeler earlier in the day along that ridge and we thought that was high. Then I found this trail that made that ridge seem pretty low. I was over 8,500' at this spot.

I thought this was a really neat spot. The colors were just starting to turn and this little pond was really neat. Too bad the elk didn't think it was as neat as I did.

This was a spot where a game warden had told us to check out. I'm afraid the elk could see us coming from a mile away here. Pretty country in it's own way, but we didn't pick this spot to hunt on opening morning.

My friend and his son actually ran into some elk on their scouting expeditions on Friday. We decided to try one spot and if it didn't turn out to try the other later. We headed up the trail in the dark and the elk were talking at daybreak. We got into some elk and I got a shot off at a rag horn bull but it was 550 yards away and I missed. That was pretty much it for elk hunting this year.

The area we ended up deciding to hunt was really a pretty area. A little more open than the area we hunt up near the park, but still some dark timber mixed in. There was plenty of sign that elk were around, we just couldn't get back into them after that first morning. The trail started at 6,300' elevation and I took these pictures about 3 miles up the trail at a little over 8,300'. There were some prescribed burns going so toward the afternoon things got pretty hazy and several of the pictures didn't come out super clear. There were some awesome views of the Tetons, but that was where one of the fires was burning so it was really smoky on those shots.
I got plenty of exercise and saw lots of pretty country. I took some more pictures but instead of filling the blog with them I'll just post a link to my photo gallery. http://padens.com/v-web/gallery/album07?page=7

The camping went pretty uneventful which is always a good thing. Towing the travel trailer didn't seem to be too difficult and we ended up averaging a little over 10.5 mpg for the entire trip of 2,583 miles so that was actually a little better than I was expecting.

We did have a problem with a water fill hose connection but I was able to fix that in Jackson before we headed out to the boonies. Had a little issues with battery life, not sure if it wasn't charging well or if something was draining the battery, or if the heater just takes that much juice, but we had to charge the battery a couple times the last few days we were out. The only other issue was that somehow the trailer is a little out of alignment as 1 of the tires wore pretty bad on the very outside edge of the tire. You can't really change the alignment on a trailer so I guess we are just going to have to rotate the tires on it and that should help for a while. I might check into taking it to an axle shop and seeing if they think they can fix it. I don't think many people pull their trailers 2,500+ miles in just over a week so it shouldn't be an issue if we are pulling it shorter distances.

Now I'm busy catching up at work and am hoping to get down to the land to plant some wheat and oats and some food plots for the deer.

I think that's about it for now.

Nathan

Long time, no post...

Well, I've been pretty busy the last few weeks and haven't really had a chance to sit down and post anything.

To update my last post, we borrowed a battery from a friend to see if the car we found worked or not, and it worked perfectly. Went to Walmart and bought a new battery and charger and now Eli has a working battery operated car. He still hasn't gotten the driving part down perfectly, but he should be able to enjoy it for several years. The weight limit on it is 130lbs so Cathy can even get in and drive it!

Still getting things ready to go on our Elk hunting trip to Wyoming. I haven't been working out as regularly as I would have liked, but I got in a 6 mile jog Saturday morning with some pretty good hill work coming up out of the canyon so I guess I'm in about the same shape I was last year and I didn't really have any problems then.

We ended up buying a new battery for the trailer and that seemed to be the only real issue so far. We hooked it up and towed it to Post and back so Cathy could get used to towing it, and then we parked it out in the front yard and spent the night in it last night.

Since we are rookies at camping out in a travel trailer it was a good test run for us. Cathy had a note pad and we made a list of things that we needed to bring with us since it will be about an hours drive to any kind of civilization where we will be camping out in Wyoming. Cathy cooked dinner in the trailer and we had the fridge running on propane and it even got cool enough to run the heater and make sure it worked.

We didn't sleep that great as the coyotes were howling and yapping much of the night and our dogs would then run off barking at them. Eli had a hard time going to sleep because he was so excited about staying in the camper, but he finally did.

This also let me make sure I could get the trailer leveled out and set up correctly. I ended up having to use 5" of boards under the near side tires to get it level since it is on somewhat of a side hill. Hopefully we won't be staying anywhere that we need more than that. I cut 2 - 2" boards and 1 - 1" board so that gives me some variables.

Here's another picture of the trailer all leveled up.Since our pickup has just over 125,000 miles on it, I've been trying to do some preventive maintenance now that we will be towing the travel trailer about 2,500 miles round trip with some pretty good elevation changes along the way. A few weeks ago I changed out the front differential fluid and the auto transfer case fluid on the 4 wheel drive and yesterday I changed out the rear differential fluid. It seems crazy, but all 3 of them use a different type and weight of oil. The auto transfer case is a specific fluid made by GM that you have to buy at the dealer. Changing out the front differential and transfer case fluids was pretty easy, but I was a little nervous changing the rear differential since you have to pull the case off the back of the axle. I took a couple pictures of the rear differential when I had the pan off. Here's the pan after I got it cleaned up and the gasket all cleaned off. Some folks say that you can just use RTV silicone to make a new gasket, but I went ahead and bought a new gasket and put a very light layer of RTV silicone down to get it to stay put while I put it back on. I was surprised at how much metal shavings were on the magnets on both the front and rear differentials. At first you don't even realize that they are metal, it looks more like a grey mud or silt, but it sticks to the magnets so it must be metal. Reading some stuff online, it sounds like that isn't abnormal though. The round washer looking thing in the pan is the magnet.
Lastly, I'll throw in some gratuitous pictures of a dead pig. I was able to go by the land and get some work done over labor day weekend and had a chance to hunt one evening and the next morning. I shot about a 75lb pig (that's the standard 2' cooler in the background for perspective) and quartered it up there on the spot. Here's the pig taking a rest before going in the cooler.
I usually don't take any pictures of my field dressing process, but I get a few questions about it so I thought I would try to take a couple pictures and see if they would help explain it at all. I won't post them as an image here on the blog, but I'll just post a link so you can click on it if you want to see. (Warning - it is fairly graphic)

http://padens.com/v-web/gallery/album07/piggie_half

http://padens.com/v-web/gallery/album07/piggie_half2

The picture is after I've skinned one side and then removed the front shoulder, hind quarter and the back strap as well as removed the ribs on this pig since it didn't end up with the traditional hole in them. If you know what you are looking for you can see how small the lungs are on a pig and how they are nearly completely covered by the front leg. After I'm done with one side, I flip it over and repeat the same process, but I didn't take a picture of that since it was pretty much just a pile of guts and bones left.

I didn't get any standout trail camera pictures last month. I'm going to try to get back down there one time this week and get some food plots planted and I need to change out the batteries in a couple of the cameras. After that I'm planning on pretty much staying away to give the mature bucks a chance to feel like they are safe on my property. Not sure if it will work or not, but since I'll be pretty busy anyway it will be worth a try.

Probably won't post again until we get back from Wyoming. Hopefully I'll have some pictures of a dead elk to post, but talking with my friends up there, the animals aren't in their usual spots since they've had such a cool wet summer so things aren't looking that promising. We should have a good time with our friends regardless though.

I think that's about it for now. Nathan

Dumpster Diving?

Is it still dumpster diving if you pulled it out of the ditch?

Periodically we have a problem with people dumping trash along the county road going out to our house. A fridge here, washer there, etc... It's really not that common, but it does happen. Eventually a county maintenance crew finds there way out there and hauls it off, but sometimes it can take several weeks. I can honestly say that I've never been tempted to stop and pick anything up out of the ditch... until today!

When we were going out to run in the canyon this morning we noticed one of those battery operated cars in the ditch along with some other trash and decided to go back and check it out. It didn't look to be in too bad of shape so we loaded it up and brought it home to clean up and to figure out if I could get it to work or not.

I'm trying to charge the battery with a trickle charger so that is taking some patience, but everything else actually seems to be in working order. This evening Eli and I cleaned it up (hopefully it can get wet, cause I used a hose!) and played around with it some. If he pushes the little gas pedal you can push it pretty easily, but if he lets off the gas pedal the wheels lock up so at least that part seems to work. It has a few scratches, but overall it seems to be in pretty good shape. Not sure why someone would leave it in a ditch 3 miles from town, not sure if they didn't want to buy a new battery or what. Of course I thought about it some more and maybe they stole it and didn't have the charger so they just tossed it in the ditch. It doesn't really look that big in the pictures, but it is probably too big to fit in a normal sized dumpster.

Oh well, it will be interesting to see if I can get it to work or not. A new one costs $350 and there is no way we would have ever bought him one new. A replacement battery costs $56 and a charger is only $18 so we might spring for those if everything else works.

Here's some pictures of Eli playing with it.He is turning into quite the ham. He's smiling for the camera here.
And here's the current mode of operation for it!

Been a long time since I've picked up someone else's trash with the intention of using it myself, but Eli seems to really like it and the price was right! Hopefully we can get it working without spending too much money on it.

I've been working out, getting ready for elk hunting in just under a month. Got in 2 - 4 mile runs and a 30 and 35 minute hill climb session on the elliptical for the equivalent of about 14 1/2 miles this week. Last week I peaked at 18 miles in a week with a 6 mile run so I think I'll get there pretty easily this year. At one point I had a thought of running a 1/2 marathon this year, but I think I've had second thoughts on that. It will be good to be in decent shape bushwacking through the brush in Wyoming though.

That's it for now. Nathan

Whirwind...

Well, I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Austin and back. 375 miles each way!

I left the house at 4:45 this morning and made it back at 6:00 this evening pulling our new to us travel trailer!If you don't know me, you might be wondering why in the world I drove to Austin to buy a used travel trailer. If you do know me, you already know why I drove to Austin. For a Deal! ;-)

It is a 2007 model, a Cherokee Lite made by Forest River. It is an 18' travel trailer and only weighs 3,700lbs empty so it is supposed to be fairly easy to tow with a 1/2 ton pickup or even an SUV. I was able to tow it back relatively easily, but the truck did have to work at it a bit.

It would have been smarter and easier to just rent one in Wyoming, but I'm not always very smart and I tend to make things harder than they need to be!

Here's the other side.
And here's a picture of the storm that I drove through just before I got home. I don't have a weight distributing hitch or sway control bars yet, and I was thinking I might not need them until I got into the gusty winds coming through the storm. It wasn't too scary but I got down to 50 mph at one point in some heavy rain. It seemed like the wind was behind me, but the trailer really pulled hard going through the rain. I think it was more of a cross wind when it was all said and done.

I think that trip gave me a decent test for the trip that we will be making in just over a month to Wyoming and the reason why we bought the trailer in the first place. People don't think that Texas has much in the way of hills and that is true for much of Texas, but they don't call the area around Austin the "Hill Country" for nothing. That, and the fact that Austin is around 500' elevation and Lubbock is at 3,250' elevation means that I climbed more in that 370 miles than I will climb from Lubbock to Denver! From Denver to where I'm headed in Wyoming isn't much of an elevation gain overall, but there will be several ups and downs before it is all said and done.

I pretty much stuck to 65mph and the truck handled it pretty well. I kept it in 3rd gear pretty much the entire time and the truck runs right at 2,500 rpms at 65 mph in 3rd gear. It dropped down into 2nd on a couple hills and runs at 3,500 rpms at 55 mph in 2nd gear. If the hills had been much longer I might have had to slow down some on the biggest hills as it peaked at 99 degrees outside on the drive home and the truck started to get a little warm toward the top of one of the longest hills.

I was hoping to get 10 mpg and I did on the first part of the drive, but as I started climbing I got a little worse mileage. Overall I ended up getting 9.3 mpg for the trip home. I got 17.1 mpg going down there so pulling the trailer makes a little bit of a difference!

It is too tall to fit in our barn, so we're not sure exactly where we are going to park it permanently. Here's it's temporary resting spot out beside the barnWe looked at several different floor plans before pretty much deciding on this basic layout. Pretty much all the RV makers have a floor plan like this. There is a couch that folds out into a bed up front, a dinette and the kitchen stuff in the middle, and a double bed with a single bunk above it and the restroom in the back.

It hasn't been licensed in a couple years as the previous owners hadn't used it much at all. The interior looks pretty much brand new.

Here's the jackknife couch at the front.
And the beds in the back.
The dinette and the stereo. Not sure why all the RV's have to have a fancy stereo but they do.

I took a picture of the bathroom, but then decided against posting it. It pretty much has a commode and a tub/shower. Nothing special, but it should be functional.

That's pretty much my Saturday. 750 miles with 1/2 of that pulling a travel trailer.

I'm about ready to go to bed.

Nathan