5 pines farm 2016 updated 1/2017 page 29

[ron w]

And so it begins.........      

[Jerry Jeffer]

I love this thread. Can't wait to see the outcome of all your work.

[Bob Abeln]

This is always my favorite thread. Thanks Jim for your posting. Hope you get a big one!!!!!!!

[BelegStrongbow]

I shall echo what so many have already said. I truly enjoy this thread and look forward to it every year. You've got a great place, thanks for taking us along.

[Cyclic-Rivers]

Good luck this morning Jim, Raining here... Season isn't open and one branch is bothering my brain so I may go cut it in a  few minutes to have a  better shooting lane.

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

Last night and this am............

We had low rolling grey clouds yesterday afternoon with the winds out of the NW. if it weren't for the calendar you would have sworn it was November.

I left camp at 4pm.
 

I decided to hunt the top bluff. this is the highest part of the farm elevation wise. there is about 10 acres or so of open ground on top. When I arrived 9 years ago it was an old hay field that had not been hayed for several years.

I am having some issues with google earth and am unable to draw in my lines of travel.
 
I hike an old tote road we graded and seeded last fall. it runs along the inside edge of the timber above the open field by my house. the gain in elevation is roughly 800 feet. The red arrow is wind direction and the blue ones deer travel to the food plots I have in.
 

[huntsfairchase]

One of the best reads on the net! Looking forward to every entry Jim.

Best of luck

Nate

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

this stand is a 20 foot tall ladder in a giant oak right on the edge of the food plot. the food plot is on a rather steep hillside. If a deer is standing 25 yards directly in front of me he is at the top of the plot and is exactly eye level with me. at 30 yards, the hill tops out and goes down the other way, I have a good food plot on that side as well.

Here is the stand with views left and then right.
 
looking left.
 
looking right.
 

Awesome thread.

Good luck to you!

Bisch

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

About half way into my hike a spring fawn rose from it's bed along the road. It watched me the entire time and allowed me to get with 15 yards before deciding it had better move out!

I got to the stand with out bumping or spotting any additional deer.

Around 5:30 the first deer appeared. Two does and a spring fawn walked into the food plot from my left at about 75 yards. They walked on a trail that took them directly past the OTHER stand on this field! they fed off to the west and then headed to one of the other plots. I looked to my right and this fawn was feeding all by itself.
 
The fawn fed for quite a while and every time it jerked it's head up to look down into the woods I expected to see another deer arrive. after about a half hour it fed off to the east and out of my sight line.

I was enjoying the low rolling clouds and the sounds of cattle , coyotes, hawks, crows, owls. The sky began to darken and the frog noise rose. Funny how frogs make so much noise in the woods.

I was standing and I heard the familiar sounds of deer hooves in the leaves. One was coming up the ridge and it sounded like it was going to come out right under me. I turned to the right to take the bow in hand and when removing it form it's hanger I made a very slight noise. The deer stopped, blew and ran back down the hill! Hell it was about 12 yards behind me and I had not even seen it! Well at least it wasn't the big one!@

A moment later yet another doe appeared in the food plot to my left! I didn't think it was the deer that ran and yet there it was. It too fed off in westerly direction.

finally it was time to go. Halfway down the ladder, I glanced over my shoulder into the plot and the fawn I had watched earlier was walking past the front of the stand . I stood on the ladder and noticed it was being trailed by a big fat skunk! The fawn would stop and look back every few steps as if to say to the skunk, : are you coming or what"?

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

Today it was about 50 F and foggy again. Almost no wind what so ever. I decided I wanted to hunt the edge of another heavy bit of cover. This too is on the east edge of the property and roughly on the other side of a bluff from where I sat yesterday morning.

You hike up 700 feet and then hike down 700 feet in elevation to a little pond I repaired last September. With all the rain we have had this fall it is four or five feet deep now. A great little cooling off spot.
 
One of the reasons I wanted to try here is that in the evenings of late, I have seen a large group of deer in a neighbor's alfalfa field East of this spot along the county road. You can see those fields in the google earth image above.

But the deer can approach from any direction. you really need to be on your toes. I have seen some really great bucks here in November. I have also gotten caught sleeping.

The cover is heavy with black berry bushes and really difficult to move thru. Luckily there is another old logging road that I use to  get to the stand. I have also cut in some deer trails years ago and every summer I go in with a big weed cutter with a metal cutting head and reopen them.  Lot's of sign on the road and trails, wind was good, hopes were high.

But yet I got skunked!  Here is a photo of the pond from the tree.
 

We have some heat moving back in starting today, which will hamper day time deer movement. But we will see what we can get done.

[Dry Creek]

Really enjoy this thread every year.
   

[Huntrdfk]

Good luck Jim, I hate hot weather this time of year. Today it was warm and humid, even worse than just hot.

Thanks for sharing,
David

[Cyclic-Rivers]

[Homey88]

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

hunts 4 and 5.

Yesterday afternoon the thermometer read 82! The wind was gusty out of the SW. I decided I would hunt over a small food plot up top on the southern border. red is wind , blue is anticipated deer movement. Star is a rape plot.

   

As I am walking past the small rape plot, I thought to myself, wow this is getting hammered. But the light that should have said " hunt here" didn't go on.    

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

I had hiked in gym shorts and a T shirt. About 50 yards from the stand , I found some shade and changed into my hunting garb.

This food plot is lush and appears to be un touched. Still the light bulb failed to go off.

Stand is beneath arrow.
 
view from stand
 

When I put this ladder up last May I was pumped! the foliage almost completely hid the stand. Even when I came back in July and pruned shooting lanes, the potential problem with it didn't register. All the trees screening it are Sumac! Sumac looses it's  leave early and most of the cover is already gone ! Its a killer spot , but a deer would have to be blind in one eye and have that eye pointed towards you if this stand is going to work .Back to the drawing board on this spot!. around 6 pm a single spring fawn appeared on the other side of the plot and walked north towards the other food .

I left just early enough to glass the rape field, and there were 7 deer in it! That's the plot I killed last years buck in!! A guy has to stay flexible in the hunt!!

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

Since it was Monday and a work day . I had to go somewhere close by, where it would happen early if at all.

So I chose a rape field up on my northern end.
The wind was almost straight out of the south and it was warm. The just past full moon allowed me to walk the county road with no light. I am always afraid of bumping deer out of a food plot in the dark like this, but I made it to the tree with out alarming any, at least to my knowledge anyway.

it was a quiet morning. at 7am, I spotted two deer across the valley walking in the mowed fire break above the tall grass prairie. They were both bucks. what got my attention was sun light on antlers! through the binos, one looked like a mature deer the other was a little forky.
 

deer on trail here.
 

stand is in  the right hand corner over that little dirt spot in the rape field.
 
nothing appeared on my side of the valley and my next door neighbor began his day around 8 am. That usually is enough to keep the deer out of the plot or to push them out if they are in it.So I headed on back to home.

[23feetupandhappy]

Great update  

[tracker1]

Keep her coming Jim, I always have to check on your progress daily.  Good Luck.