E J

Same here, first peepers this morning.

A friend of mine hit a coyote last night and couldn't find it. He jokingly asked me if I knew anyone with a tracking dog, I told him my dog might be able to. He said ok let's try it if you have time. I went and grabbed my dog at lunch time. When I got to the spot and let my dog out my buddy said "what kind of dog is that?" I told him it was a drahthaar and he asked what the heck that was. I told him what they are and what they are supposed to do. About 15 minutes later he told me I was going to be the first call on any more tracking. He's six and I've never had him on a blood trail but he did awesome.

Another one! Three 3 point sides in the last four days.

My son with the one from today and the one from a couple days ago.

I'm on a roll! First one I've found on this place since I moved in 6 years ago. Wasn't even looking for it.

Not a very big one, but I am happy about finding it. I haven't found any in a few years. I'm hoping to get back out there after the snow is gone.

I consider myself a decent caller. Not as good as I used to be though. Back in the early 2000's I had some great and big places to hunt and no kids and not much job responsibilities so I hunted a lot in NY and PA and got to mess around calling to a bunch of birds. Now a day's between kids and my job I don't have much time to go even though I have Tom's gobbling right out my back door.

My parents started that way. Go for a few weeks. That turned into a few months and buying a place. Now they go for 6 months plus a day to be considered residents and are on their fourth place they have owned. Each being a little bigger and nicer. My mother was telling me the place they are in now is worth 50-70k more now than when they bought it about 5 years ago. My father has his garage full of his old man toys, a Corvette, a motorcycle and a bombardier three wheeler, plus a kayak and regular pedal bikes. They love it down there.

There is still a little work to be done to the inside of the pond that should be finished up tomorrow. They started some rough grading around the edges Friday to start shooting for a grade level for the bank. I can't believe the color of the ice.

No the guy doing the pond wondered about that but said there would be lots of snakes out sunning on it if we did that and my wife hates snakes. The pond is quite a ways back off the road so I think we're going to have a beautiful crushed stone driveway coming in off the road.

With any luck we will be close to done by the end of the week.

The hammering will be done today after three days of chipping away. There is a heck of a lot of crushed stone coming out of this hole.

So here's where we're at. The guy digging the pond was to busy to get back this summer so he came back last week to start hammering the rock.

I was 2 hour's away at my hunting camp when my wife went into labor a week early with my first kid. I made it to the hospital with my dog riding shotgun just in time. She still likes to remind me of that from time to time.

I got this on my camera back in the early fall. Others had pics next town over after I did. I don't know of anyone that actually saw it.