I know alot of people say don’t shoot the pigs while they are in the trap because it makes it hard to catch anymore but I really do not have a choice. I do not have anyway of transporting them to another location so I always just shoot mine and then when I get ready to catch some more I just move the trap to another spot over some fresh ground and it seems to not really make a difference to the pigs.

I have 3 coolers packed to the top with ice and meat so in between work shifts we will be boning and wrapping meat all weekend and eating some good grilled pork loin! Monday we are gonna move the trap about 50 yards over by the other feeder and bait it for awhile and see if we can catch the other bunch that have been coming on it. I love my treestand hunting and being out in the woods but if you dont have alot of hunting time and want to fill the freezer quick then get you a pig trap and let the trap hunt when you cant! It does get frustrating when dealing with smart and trap wise pigs but it is alot of fun! Its kind of like fishing, you love the relaxation of being out fishing and feeling them fight when you hook one, but the best and quickest way to fill the freezer with catfish is by trotlining which is a little work but a whole lot of fun too! 

The best part is that I have a freezer full of good pork. Now I can relax and bowhunt for the rest of  what is left of my deer season without feeling any pressure, other than having a unfilled buck tag for the first time in years which really I guess is not the end of the world. Keep ya posted on how the rest of 2010 season turns out. Take care

I have not given up yet but this looks like it is going to be the first year that I did not at least get one deer for the year since I was about 15. I cannot fault anyone but myself and terrible shooting because I did have a couple of chances at least. I also learned something new about my place and that is to hunt them hard during the early season because the bucks seem to disappear after the middle of November.

I have been carrying the boys all hunting one at a time some on Sunday evenings since that is about the only time I am off when they are out of school. I thought since they were so young that they would be moving around and would want to leave about 30 minutes after we got on stand but they all surprised me. Michele bought us a two man ladder stand to setup over the feeder area so I could take the boys and they would not have to sit on the ground. They love it and each time I have taken one of them they are quite and still all the way until it gets dark. The only complaint I have heard from them is that they just wish we could have seen a deer. I always try and explain to them that hunting is just that way sometimes, but deep down I am thinking I sure wish we could see a dang deer too! 

Been getting lots of pig pics coming in on my feeders every night so I am fixing to forget the deer amd start hammering the hogs. I actually think that they are probably one of the reasons my deer activity has slowed way down. Michele got me a Destroyer gun light by sniper hawg lights as an early Christmas present so I could start hunting the pigs at night. I have not really got to try it out on the pigs yet because I only have one night a week off, but from just playing around with it this thing is gonna be awesome if it doesnt spook the pigs. She got me the one with the red led so hopefully they wont spook when it hits them. I will post more about it when I try it out on some pigs.

Got my pig trap set and baited already up by my feeders, so I should at least have a couple of pigs in the next day or so. I have been spreadin a little corn and Hogwild around the outside and inside of the trap. They already have been going inside it so now that they are used to it I set the tripwire up and wait on the bacon! Keep you posted and hope everyone is having a great season!

 I have one of my climbing stands set up across the logging trail from the spot in the cedar and pine thicket where  I have been getting deer pics regularly since July. It is a perfect setup because they come out in the road about 15 yards in front of me, turn left and walk down the logging road bout 20 yards and turn right and follow  a small creek drainage that runs down to the creek on the west side of our property. The only problem with the whole deal is that they do it a lot more when it is dark than when it is daylight! 

I usually get to my stand about 30 minutes before light and I have found from my game cam that alot of the bucks are coming past my stand anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour before I arrive. I usually hunt until about 11 or 11:30am but due to not having much of anything moving around me all morning I decided to climb down about 10:15am  and go check out some other stand sites I have on the property. I had already lowered my pack and bow to the ground and was preparing to climb down. As I was unbuckling the seat of my stand from the tree, the plastic buckle hit the side of the stand and made a small clicking noise and all I heard was a big snort of air and I looked over and there he was looking straight at me! He then turned and 2 jumps later he was out of sight back down in the creek bottom behind me! He was heading back up the drainage out of the creek and would probably have crossed the road right in front of me giving me a perfect 12 yard broadside shot!  I was sick and wanted to cry but that is what I get for second guessing myself and being impatient! Not postive but I am pretty sure it was the buck in the picture below though he is not a monster I would have been really proud to have gotten him!

I have seen a few other bucks walking out of range in the thick stuff and tried calling to them but they are either deaf or pay it no mind. I watched one work a scrape about 50 yards across from me in the thicket one evening and I hit him with grunts and doe bleats and he acted like he never even heard it. He just finished tending his scrape and headed the other way. I have not seen a single doe as of yet this season. I have pics of nine different bucks but also have not gotten a pic of a doe since September which explains why now with the rut on I have stopped getting buck pics these last couple of weeks. I think I have figured out that with my property being mostly creek bottom and thick stuff that alot of the does are hanging out on the property that borders ours on the west side. It is not as thick as ours and has a lot of small openings and scattered timber and I know how much does like that stuff. Also it is for sale and as far as I can tell no one is hunting it at the moment so I am almost 100 percent sure that the pressure we have been putting on our place has made them seek refuge in there for awhile.

I can only really blame myself for making them as nocturnal as they are right now because I was in and out of my hunting area almost every other day this spring and summer but now that I have gotten the place fixed up pretty good after hunting season the place is gonna be kept quiet and undisturbed with as little human activity in there as possible. With me working six days a week now instead of having four days off like I used to have, I should have no problem staying out of there. I cannot help myself sometimes because I love being in the woods, but I know now that to make it a great hunting place like I know it is capable of being, it has to be left alone with as little impact as necessary or they will go nocturnal on you quick!

I have never seen as much pig sign in my life as I have here and not seen pigs. They are nocturnal as well, but they are coming in on my feeders every night now which could also be one reason my deer activity is slow. Of course with the full moon and warm temps we have been having lately I think every thing is moving at night right now but there have been some good deer being killed around here lately. All my vacations are used up for this year, so now I can only hunt the mornings after work but I will be back after them again starting Thanksgiving morning. We have a big cold front that is supposed to come in Wednesday so I decided to give my area a break and not go back in there until Thanksgiving. They should be up and moving around because the temps are supposed to be in the low 30’s so hopefully luck will shine on me and give me another oppurtunity that I won’t mess up! Hope everyone’s season is going good and hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving!

We filled the feeders and turned them on and planted about a half acre food plot the first of September. We got rain the same weekend we planted the plot and it started coming up great, but it is  looking  pretty bad now because we have not had a drop of rain since.We are in a drought pretty much here in Northeast Texas and Southeast Oklahoma. We have not been getting the rain that other parts of the state have been getting so we really need some bad. As far as the rest of the weather here, I do not think you could ask for any better for the first week of bow season.

 The temps have been really cool and the winds have been very light and calm. My buddy has been hunting my place with me but so far neither of us has seen a thing. We have only had 3 stand sits and all 3 times the weather was absolutely beautiful and perfect even though we have been skunked so far! We were supposed to hunt Tuesday morning also but I forgot to plug my cell phone in and it went dead while searching for signal all night from our cabin. Since it went dead and the alarm did not sound we woke up well after daylight lol!

When I woke up and found it was daylight I got to admit I was a little ticked off, but I got really ticked when we went and checked the game camera on the trail to the pond I am hunting over. I had 4  good size pigs on the trail at 7 am that morning! Oh well that is just the kinda luck I seem to have. I woul have really been sick if a big 10 pt buck had been there though lol!

Even though we have not scored yet we are still having a good time just being out there. I am not discouraged at all because I have pig and deer sign everywhere around the pond and logging trail that runs through our place. I have not found any rubs or scrapes yet but I figure that should pick up within the next couple of weeks. I am still getting pics of young bucks,does, and fawns pawing at the salt licks I have put out. The pics of the deer I have been getting has been anywhere from 9 at night until 4:30 am. Hopefully with the rut getting closer their daylight activity will pick up soon.

I will be going again in the morning and tomorrow evening and then call it quits for a couple of days to spend some quality time with the boss Michele! With her busy schedule and my crazy work schedule now we do not get to spend very much alone time together anymore so Friday we plan on spending together. Saturday I will take the kids down to the camp and have an outing with them since they are in school now and do not get to go very often and Sunday I will be in church. I plan on hunting Monday morning a little while but have to be back at work that evening. Besides a few short morning hunts I will have to wait for Saturdays to hunt all day if we get them off.

My next vacation will be Oct 25 and everyone I have talked to tells me that is when the rut usually starts in the area we are at. I hope they are right because that is the week I have been looking forward to all year long! That week is the time I will be on stand all day long. I will not say that I won’t get skunked, but I can tell you that it won’t be from lack of putting in time and effort! I just thank God for blessing me with a place to go and enjoy his creation. I hope everyone is having a great 2010 bow season so far and hope it only gets better! Take care and I will do my best to keep ya posted on my season!

I also have pics of four different bucks that have been hitting it hard. They are all pretty good looking bucks.They are not monsters but they all look pretty healthy and are all rack bucks. The one in the pic is the biggest one I have got on cam yet.  I have seen the time where he would have looked big coming through the woods. Two of the other three bucks I have gotten on camera are gonna be solid 6 pointers. The other has damaged his left main beam somehow because it appears to turn and drop downward. If I keep getting pics of these guys then the one with the messed up main beam will be the one I try and target during the early bow season. Not because I think there is anything wrong with his genes or nothing, I just have never killed a buck with a messed up freaky looking rack.

I have gotten several more pics of single does with no fawns. I guess they were too young to get bred last season, but I hope they keep hanging around and bring me in lots of buck action this fall. The doe and fawn below are the ones that stay on the lick the most. All in all things are starting off right this year so far. I am already pumped even though it feels like it is 110 degrees outside. I just wish I owned about three more game cameras though. Them things can get addictive! 

We have had a couple of flash floods up there since they have finished but no where near enough rain to fill it up. We planted bermuda grass on top and around the inside of the dam to keep it from eroding so much while we wait for it to fill up. Seems like it just stopped raining now but probably just as well until the dam gets covered in grass. Hopefully it will be full by next spring and we can start stocking it.

We plan on stocking it with bluegill and fathead minnows first so they can get established good as feed for the other fish. After they get going a few months we are gonna stock about 100 largemouth bass and 100 channel cats. That’s what we had in our pond on our old place, and they provided hours of fun for us the kids and also quite a few good meals for us all. We love our new place and about the only thing we been missing especially this time of year is our pond. Hopefully next year we won’t be missing it at all. We just prayin for some of those slow,steady, two and three day rains to get here. I am posting a picture of it below but it is from a cell phone so it is probably hard to tell much about it. You can see in the pic the little pond down in the middle and behind it is the new dam.When it fills up all the ground in the pic should be water.

I did a stupid thing when I was about 17 and quit high school. I do not want to say that everyone who quits school is stupid. I know that some have to quit for circumstances that cannot be prevented. For me it was stupidity, because I quit for the simple reason I did not like school. I began researching jobs when  I thought I would be losing mine. I figured out quick that nowdays without a high school diploma or GED I was screwed!

I signed up for GED classes and after 6 weeks of studying and going to the classes I am proud to say I took the test and passed! I have been stressed and worrying about this for awhile, but now I feel really good. I just got my certificate in the mail yesterday and it feels so good to have that behind me. Now if my place of employment ends up shutting down I do not have to spend time preparing to get a diploma, instead I can go enroll in some college courses or other vocational courses.

All I can say is that if you don’t  have a diploma or GED then it might be time for you to consider going for it. I know that some think they will never need it just like I thought for a long time because I was so secure at my job. Well that way of thinking came back and bit me. I still have a job for now but I don’t  know for how long and it’s sure not very secure anymore. I was scared I couldn’t  pass it, but really with the classes they offer a person it is not all that hard. If you can read, write, add, subtract, multiply, and divide you can pass it.

I don’t  know how it is where you live, but here you cannot even get a job digging ditches without at least a GED. You also have to have one to enroll in any college vocational courses. I have been checking into a taxidermy school that I want to enroll in next spring and they even require a diploma or GED. Could not quite understand that one but it goes to show me I could not do anything career or job wise without it. So if you do not have a diploma or GED go ahead now and go for it. If I can pass it then you can too!

With all that said and everything back to normal now I will have quite a few new posts coming up. I have had a few projects going on and I am so pumped and ready for bow season. With all the stress and worry behind me for now I can get back to what I like talking about the most HUNTING! Thanks to everyone who reads and comments on my blog. Hope you continue and if you have any ideas about hunting or anything else for that matter send me a email I am very interested in hearing ideas and hunting stories.

When you are a hunter or any kind of outdoorsman eventually you are gonna have encounters with snakes. Alot of people will try and kill every snake they see, but myself if I encounter one in the woods I will usually just leave him be and go along about my business. I remember a few years back I was bowhunting one afternoon. I climbed out of my stand about dusk and was slipping through the woods making my way to the field where I was gonna go pick up my buddy. It was not hot but just kinda cool and I was wearing a thin pair of camo pants and some camo hiker type shoes.

I stopped at the edge of the field and was gonna make sure no deer were on it before I stepped out because I did not wanna spook them, when I felt something hit my shin. I really did not pay any attention to it because I thought I had just stepped on a stick and it popped up and hit me until I felt it again while I was standing still! I shined my flashlight down and saw that I was standing on about a 2 ft copperhead that had struck again, and this time got his fangs hung up in my pants. Needless to say I left stuff scattered everywhere trying to get out of there! 

Finally after calming down and picking up all my stuff I scattered, I realized I had not been bitten. I guess the only thing that saved me was my pants were kind of baggy and hung him up. I will tell you though that I bought me some snake proof boots after that and if it is above 55 degrees I wear them. I do not blame the snake though because I guess if I were in his place and someone stepped on me I would bite them too! Not the snakes fault he was born a snake, he was just trying to protect himself the way that he knows how.

The other day me and my dad were up at our deer camp and encounterd the cottonmouth water moccasin in the photo above, right behind our cabin. We ended up killing him because he was almost right out the back door. I hated to kill him but with all the kids we carry up there, I cannot take a chance on having one of them get snake bit. He never really struck out at us or showed any aggression besides coiling up and throwing his mouth open as a warning to stay back. I was really surprised that a cottonmouth would be that close to our cabin when he should have been down on the creek.

I really am thinking of getting some snake tongs to keep up there so that when I see a venomous snake I can catch and relocate it away from our cabin to the woods where it belongs. Michele thinks I am crazy and should kill them but to me they get a bad rap. Snakes do not seek people out to bite, but if you surprise one by stepping or sitting on it, or reaching into places without looking where they could be, then you are very likely to get bitten. I do not blame anyone for killing a venomous snake if you find one where children play or lot’s of people frequent who could end up being bitten. But just remember that the snake is not there looking for someone to bite, he is just somewhere he should not be. They really want to be as far away from people as people want to be from them.

 I have heard of so many different ways to make salt licks or mineral licks that I cannot count them all. The way that works best for me is to just buy those cheap 50lb white salt blocks, dig a hole deep enough to bury the block but leave  the top sticking out about an inch above the ground. Then I fill in the hole around the block with the loose bag salt,  and  cover the top of the block with loose dirt and more bag salt mixed together with a rake. Then I pray for rain.

I mix the bag salt in with the dirt and cover the top so that the deer will start using them sooner. I learned that one year when I put out a couple of blocks and just buried them up to the top and nothing ever touched them. I figured that the deer where I was must not like salt. The next spring rolled around after the block had dissolved into the ground and had been forgotten about, and  I noticed deer were tearing the ground up where the blocks had been the year before trying to get the salt. So if the deer start hitting them pretty heavy and it’s not raining enough to melt the block into the ground some, I will just keep recharging the licks with bag salt until they stop using them for the year. 

I put four licks on our new property this year. The deer have already started using all four. I put one by each feeder and one by each of our ponds. I know that some people will say to use the brown blocks because they have more mineral than salt, and have more of what the deer need. I myself have used the brown blocks and white blocks side by side and never had anything touch the brown blocks, even after they melt into the ground. I do not put out licks to grow monster bucks anyhow, I just want to hold deer on and around my property. I try to do so by keeping as much stuff out that appeals to their cravings. The pic below is one of my licks I made at the first of April, it was completely covered with dirt and salt when I made it and now the deer have dug all around it.  

I chose not to hunt in the evenings because after about noon the wind always picked up and swirled very bad, so I figured I would be doing myself more harm than good by even going in the area. I have not gotten any more pics of them on the Moultrie D40 either so I thought that they must have been just passing thru, or I spooked them by leaving  scent around the feeders.

 I will be the first to say if that is the case these are the spookiest, most skittish deer and hogs in this area I have ever seen. I always try to be careful and not touch alot of stuff and leave as little scent as possible in my areas, but I guess I am going to have to start taking extreme precautions. From now on I will wear rubber boots and rubber gloves when checking and filling feeders and even checking my game cameras.

I know that it had to have something to do with it, because even though they abandoned the feeders, they have not left the area. We have 2 small ponds on our place and one is less than 75 yards of the feeders, and they have been all over it rootin’ and makin wallows, so from here on out I will be extremely cautious about scent control and hopefully they won’t even know a person has been anywhere around.

I plan on getting after them again this weekend, but to tell the truth, I just can’t seem to get very much into it right now. After finding out at the first of the month that the plant I have worked at for 20yrs is about to layoff 260 people by August, I have been pretty stressed out trying to figure out what I am gonna do.

 I know that we are just now feeling the economic effects that thousands of other americans have been feeling for 2 years now, but if  Obama, Biden, Nazi Pelosi and all the rest of those communist’s that call themselves democrats stay in office much longer, you can bet that there will be thousands more! At least I can say I didn’t vote for em’!!!  And for the people who did because they wanted change, well all I can say is congatulations, they got it!!