E J

Dang! Nice buck

Had a decent buck tear out of the woods this morning at 7:00 that ran across an open field. I think he was spooked out of the orchard above the woods. Nice to see a good buck during daylight hours!

My wife's birthday is November 7 as well. I remember one year we were all set to take her out to eat after I got done hunting in the evening.......... Until I happened to shoot a buck right before dark. She was super happy about missing out on dinner so I could track and gut and skin a deer!

I saw a smoke phase wild turkey quite a few years ago. I saw it while spring turkey hunting once and then once later in the year while bow hunting. I wish I had gotten a picture, it was pretty cool.

I had them all winter, 3 or 4 a day. In the late spring they disappeared. Now they are back all over the outside of the house. I image I'll have tons this winter based on what I'm seeing out side now.

I have used a home equity loan to buy land and another option is farm credit east.

When I had my property in Steuben county the best observed day time activity was always from Nov 5-12 with the 7-10 being the peak. Since I sold that place and hunt primarily in Wayne county I have yet to get it figured out as reliably

Pretty cool! Haven't seen one at my current place, but I called one in hunting with a buddy for coyotes this winter in southern Wayne county this winter. I'm sure sooner or later I'll get one on camera at my place.

I have very fussy deer at my place. They won't eat most of the stuff that food plots are made up of. Last year I planted a whitetail institute mix of mostly peas and a few oats from their oat product. The deer didn't touch the peas but did eat the oats. Hopefully tomorrow I will be planting their trophy oat mix to try. Hopefully I can squeeze planting into getting some real work done and having my son's ninth birthday party!

By the time hunting season rolls around that bear will have put the feed bag on big time and be around 125 pounds I would guess. It is definitely not a young one of this year.

If I remember correctly, once the kid is old enough they can take the course. After that you prove to the DEC they have the certification, then they will start sending the the license every year by mail like they do for everyone else.

The bucks on my property do the opposite. They reappear. My place hold does and fawns all summer and rarely any bucks until mid to late September. I know they aren't far though, my buddy has been getting pics of a bachelor group all summer across the road from me. According to him we have some nice bucks to look forward to seeing once hunting season gets here.

I have thrown winter wheat or winter rye over clover plots in late August just before a rain in the past and had good luck.

That's cool! I should have had your cat around earlier this year when a mink was hitting my flock nightly taking one a night until I tricked it into my double conibear/stove pipe contraption.

You are right about school and teachers. My eight year old told me this spring I was ruining the natural habitat when I was working ground for a deer foot plot of corn! It blew me away

For me I guess it was my grandfather on my moms side that got me started, he was a pretty avid hunter until my grandma died. My dad was a pretty casual hunter, pretty much opening day and then maybe a Saturday later on. My dad went a little more when I was old enough to tag along. One time just the two of us went to a spot my grandfather had gotten us permission to hunt in Cohocton. As we were walking in we came upon a doe getting a drink from a stream. My dad shot her and I was hooked! When I was 17 I started hunting at my uncles place where they owned a bunch of land with a different group of people. Hunting turned into an every weekend thing plus scouting and food plots and everything else that goes along with it. I heard a lot of the phrase "do as I say and not as I do" for the next few years and learned how to "hang out with the guys". Since then I have bought and sold a couple of hunting camps, killed a lot of deer and turkeys. Now a days 20+ years later I do more working than hunting and hope to get my two boys interested while they get the opportunity to grow up on the 88 acres we live on.

Go for it! I got mine with highschool graduation money 20 years ago, talk about a smart move! Even smarter was adding archery and muzzleloader during my first year at my first job after college. I bought my older son his right before the last price hike when he was 3. Now I need to get my other son his yet.

Appreciate the input guys. On the pond boss forums some guys have had good luck with what I would like to do. If it doesn't work for me I can always add a few large mouth and bluegill and they will take over the pond. To anyone Interested in ponds check out pond boss. When I became interested I found a lot of good info there.

I just added a 34 acre chunk to my place that I want to put a pond on for me and my kids to have a place to fish in the future. There is a pond pretty close by that seeps in the direction where I want to put mine. The soils are heavy in clay according to the USDA soil maps and the farmer that used to work the field that I want to put the pond in. I'm hoping to get a couple quotes soon from some excavation guys pretty soon. They are all really busy so I want to get on someone's list before too long. I've been doing a lot of looking online and am thinking about stocking smallmouth bass, perch and red ear sunfish whenever the pond gets ready.

My wife was out cruising with our kids on our ranger today. While driving she went next to a 6 foot fence I have going around 20 apple trees in the middle of a food plot. Right next to the fence was this nest with what she swears was two hens sitting on it. There are clearly two different shades of eggs in the nest. Could there be two hens sharing a nest? I know that a turkey could have variation in their egg color, but with my chickens some hens always lay a lighter shade every day and some lay a darker shade every day.

Checked my plot last night, no corn sprouted yet. The rain today should help with that.

Over 300 $ per hive!

5 total for me. Two days behind my house where I had a decent amount of action from a group of birds that included at least one Jake and one Tom. The Jake presented a give me shot that I passed. One morning at a different location where there were at least one Tom and a few Jake's, two other guys were on the neighboring property calling like crazy. A different Hunter shot the Tom a week later. Two other mornings with a friend at his place. We were 50 yards apart. He shot one of three Jake's I called in while I was watching a Tom in a field with a hen that he couldn't see. The hen eventually lured the Tom away. Good season all in all. I used to hunt lots more but work and kids have put a stop to that.

Last year I scaled back on the corn plots because they didn't get hit too hard the year before. Then of course the drought hit and my one smaller corn plot didn't amount to anything. This year I went back to one bigger and one smaller plot and got them in today. I don't do them too fancy, I spread fertilizer, disc, spread seed then disc one more time. Then when the corn gets close to a foot tall I spray it with round up. This seems to work pretty good. With rain showers in the forecast for the morning I should have corn growing before you know it!

I have had a terrible problem with minks getting my chickens this year. One got five in late February before I killed it and another one earlier this month that was really sneaky got one a night for four nights in a row before I moved the remaining survivors into my garage so they didn't all get their heads chewed off. I got that one too and it was huge!