Went out to meet Jim today & have a look around his place. I checked his land last night using google earth so I had an idea, but it didn't prepare me for how awesome this place is. His whole parcel is about 1 mile from east to west & about 300 yards south to north from the river to the flood levee & is then surrounded on 3 sides by miles of bean & cut corn fields. There's a decent tree line of river birch, oaks & other hardwoods running along the Levee & another good tree line of birch & scrub brush running along the river. Between the two treelines runs roughly 90 acres of Illinois CRP & at each end is a willow grove. Jim put in a couple miles of road through the property years ago but it's all but heavy deer trail now through 10' high crp. Still, he did his best to drive these old roads & show me his old sets, though I wasn't impressed. After about an hour of cruising around & seeing the sights, I shook loose of Jim & took a walk on my own back down to the river to where he'd shown me a big bedding area. Just east of the bedding up near where the groves connect the 2 tree lines I walked upon a slough that runs from the river back up into the timber towards Jims crop fields & I'm pretty sure I found this properties honey hole. The game trails running through this slough look like they were made by buffalo. While I was walking the trail on the river I found tracks from a monster & saw them again in the slough accompanied by his old scrape line. Actually I found so many of his signs & tracks in the slough that I believe I found his primary stomping grounds.

After I thoroughly searched this slough I found myself an oak to put my Summit in, I took out my folding saw & trimmed myself a set. I'm so excited to hunt this place that I'm canceling my opening day plans so I can hunt this site instead.

20 days & counting!