DougMD

I did a feeder set up just like you are describing using a boat wench. Luckly, there was a decent sized limb about 4ft off of the ground and I just sawed it off and mounted the wench to the stub......that was the easy prob to solve....LOL

I attached some pullies to a big limb about 18 ft off the ground, ran my cable through the pullies then over to the wench. Filled that 55 gal drum up with almost 300 Lbs of corn, and started cranking. I was cranking for a while and the barrel had barely lifted off the ground......so I really laid into it .......when I next turned around the barrel was still only about 3 ft off of the ground but the end of the limb was almost touching the ground....LOL ......I had to lower the barrel back down, climb the tree and link cable to two other limbs above the main one before I could get enough support to pull up that 300 lb barrel of corn and even with the pully system, it still took quite an effort to crank that puppy up. All in all, it turned out to be quite a pain in the rear.

Now, I simply anchor a couple of 2x6's between two trees at the desired height and hang the barrel from the 2x6's. The barrel is fixed position. I don't have to lower it up and down. I made a ladder out of 2x4's and just leave it leaning up against one of the support trees so it's out of the way. When it's time to fill the barrel up, I just move the ladder over by the barrel & climb right up. I get corn in 50Lb bags so it's no big deal to lug one of those up to barrel height. As a matter of fact, it's a lot easier than cranking that barrel up used to be...LOL

Hope this helps.......Good luck with your feeder!

firstshot