My Season's Done
Good season for me personally. Plenty of fresh meat for the freezer. rTrained and proofed a "blood trailer". She (Ellie Mae) found 6 of 7 deer the she was asked to blood trail. One was over .8 miles of tracking. Most rewarding of all, "guided" my California buddy to a nice 8 pt. buck.
But all in all, it was a diown year. Collectively our club was way, way down on does. Just were not seeing any after about December 10 or so.
Guests collectively were trigger happy and took too many bucks that should have been passed. That sucked.
Food plots were a fiasco due to extraordinarily dry weather for almost 9 weeks after they initially came up. But the plot hunters were "saved" by a tremendous crop of turnips on about 25% of the total acreage we plant. Deer were hammering turnips last 6 weeks of the season.
Winter deluges turned our woods roads into a muddy mess. Several creeks stayed out of their banks days on end several times. Worse road and culvert washouts I have seen in about a decade. Man we have a lot of work facing us to get the road system ready for next year.
Arsonist burned over 300 acres of which 50+ were outright killed. Owner going to be clear cut that acreage as soon as it dries out enough. And another 600 or so is being thinned this off-season. That should help increase the understory browse.
Now on to gobbler time ... March 15!