Stand placement begins!

This past weekend Sr, Mike and myself made a last minute decision to run up to the property and work on getting some stands in place for the upcoming bow opener.  Seeing that we have multiple weddings and all the functions that go with them upcoming, saying our weekends to work are limited is an understatement.

I have decided to place three stands this year.  The first is in my traditional spot off the corner of the food plot.  Last year produced my first ever deer when I shot my doe in the evening of opening day.  We are hoping that our continued work on the food plot will bring more deer to this area.

The second stand we were able to get up and ready for the season is in a new area that we have never hunted before. I have always wanted to get back in this area, as my grandpa's old deer stand used to overlook it and my took a very large, nice 8 pointer from that stand.  Due to age of the tree that stand is in it is no longer safe to hunt from.  We were able to find a nice tall pine tree that has some cover provided by other tree's around it.  There are quite a few trails that appear to be heavily used that all come together in an area right out in front of the tree.  One change we made when hanging this stand was we decided to go up about an extra 4 to 5 feet to hopefully keep me high enough and out of the deer's normal vision range.  I am always crazy about my scent control, but this stand will really put this to the test.

After getting these two stands done in the 90 plus degree heat and the massive swarms of mosquitos we decided to scout out the stand placement of my third stand but not actually hang the stand.  Once again I have decided to get myself into an area that we have not traditionally hunted.  It is on the backside of the ridge that Sr's double ladder stand is on, leading right out of the swamp and almost right behind the cabins.  My hope is that if the deer are continuing to travel in and out of the swamp but not crossing across in front of the double stand this stand will give us the opportunity we have been missing.  Over the past couple of years we have seen quite a few deer traveling this corridor so I am quite excited for this stand.

I am planning another trip around the 28th or so.  I plan on getting my last stand done as well as helping work on any of JR's stands that are not up yet. Hopefully the heat will tone down a little for the next trip, although I doubt it. 

E

12 Days Later

12 Days Later

Our work on the food plot was done and the waiting was killing me.  Crops do not grow over night.  That might be the only thing I know for certain about planting crops.  I have never had a garden of my own, my grass is probably average at best, and my food plots in the past have not done well.  These reasons are why the waiting was not going well for me.  

Day 5 seemed to come fairly quickly.  We had time to study our trail cam pics and discuss the upcoming success of our food plot growth.  The first week ended and Eric started calling me about going back up again to check on the growth.  We planned to go 12 days after we had first planted.  We had no idea what to expect 12 days later.  Would the field be flush and green with tiny clover and greens popping up all over?  We had plenty of rain, in fact maybe it was to much rain.  Can you get to much rain?  What if the field washed out and all we had was a huge mud puddle?  Do we need to fertilize?  So many questions and all hinged on what we saw 12 days later.  

Eric got to the property before I did and started cutting grass.  When I finally arrived we took the trusty Polaris out and made our trek to the field.  I can tell you I was apprehensive when we rounded the last corner to see what all of our work looked like:

Not exactly what we were hoping to see.  I wasn't entirely positive we were going to have lush green crops flowing forth from our field, but I was hoping to see something positive.  Now this may just be the growth cycle, I really have no idea.  The deer may have eaten all of our crops before they came up.  Hell it may be on the verge of exploding into a lush tropical jungle full of pizza trees and jelly bean bushes.  For this guy, 12 days was not the holiday I was hoping it would be.  

Stay tuned!

-Dennis