Eastern NC 35

[Charlieyca]

Couple pics from my annual visit inside the sanctuary last week.

that looks very similar to my sanctuary, down to the puddles of water. Only thing its missing is a few midstory trees to start blocking out the sun.

 

[Charlieyca]

Family day at the farm this saturday. Had my wife and 3 daughters, sister and her 2 kids, nana (who bought the farm) and pawpaw, and the families of 2 friends from work. The kids carried all 50 weed mats, tree tubes, and pvc stakes to the flags I had marking the trees. They helped hammer the stakes in for a few. My youngest remembered stomping around the trees from last week when we planted, so she continued to stomp around each seedling. I should have taken a picture of the smile when she would stomp, then look up at me, then stomp away.

2 friends from work had never shot a gun and wanted to. I loaded up single shot iron sight 22, scoped tube fed marlin 22mag, break action 410, over under 20 guage and pump 12 so they could shot a little of everything. Between 4 adults and 4 kids they shot 5 boxes of bullets and a case and a half of skeet. My oldest, 7, decided after watching everyone else shoot the shotguns she wanted to try the 410. She didnt want to shoot it again but said she would try again next time cause she wants to get a turkey hahahah.

Didn't get as much work done as I planned, but we had 10 kids from 4 families outdoors playing, working and learning about nature. I take that as a long term win.

That is my parents with their 5 grandkids, 3 of the girls are mine.

 

[Charlieyca]

I transplanted 10 eastern red cedars from my inlaws house. I planted them to separate my road food plot from the middle plot and it also screens my path from the middle plot. I planted them in 2 staggered rows of 5, spaced 6-8ft apart. Once I climbed up into my stand the ones on the end of the road will eventually start to block my view of a shooting lane. Guess I will cross that bridge 10 years from now. I also dragged, sprayed seeded and cultipacked my 3 shooting lanes with a mix of 50lb wheat, 2lb crimson clover, 2 lb radish, and 2 lb chicory. Its a new mix for me and a newly planted shooting lane. Lanes are 1/3 of an acre and got 50lb 10-10-10 and 3 bags pellet lime a month ago.

 

[Charlieyca]

Im a visual learner, so unless i can see it I dont understand it. Ive mentioned this upthread, before but it bears repeating. In hindsight, I would not have built this box stand in the center and had the wheel spokes coming out of the center. Any time I hunt this stand, my scent is getting blown towards deer. However, as bad as that sounds, I am limited to weekend hunting for majority of the season. So by default, I am low pressure.
Goals for this section of the farm.
1. Eventually each of the outside corners will have a stand, so that I can actually hunt the wind.
2. Everything but the pears trees in orange was planted just a few weeks ago, so it is not providing food yet, but should provide a variety of browse, soft mast, and hard mast in years to come. I want to fill in trees and shrubs that die and provide native and productive mast
3. Continue to "build" sidewalks as bartylla calls them through the thick brush to attempt to funnel deer movement. All the green and dark brown is thick dense cover.
4. Move away from annual plots, limited to 1 each in section on the farm. Long term time spent planting shrubs and trees will provide much more food over a lifetime. I am in it for the long haul
5. Maintain perennial plots. I started with a 1/10 acre white clover plot in one section and will spread that to 1/2 acre in each of 3 sections. Hopefully will rotate perennial clover plots to annual plot every 3-4 years depending on health of clover.
6. Develop enough clearings to entice turkeys to brood and nest on the property. This one is last because it is proabably the most difficult to manage while managing for the thick cover for deer. Hopefully some random clusters of 1/10 acre clearing and future NWSG plantings will suffice.

 

[Weasel]

that looks very similar to my sanctuary, down to the puddles of water. Only thing its missing is a few midstory trees to start blocking out the sun.

Yes sir, on my flat ground, there's no shortage of puddles until the heat of the summer chases them away. Nowhere for the snow melt and spring rains to go.

Great picture of the family, so important for us to keep getting the youngsters outside.

Any chance of doing a little more work on the blind to tighten it up and make it scent proof? If you had it sealed up good, you would just have to be careful with your approach and where you leave scent coming and going.

 

[Charlieyca]

I haven't really thought about that for this stand. Our muzzleloader starts beginning of october near the coast. We have more days in the 70s than 50s and im afraid an air tight stand would be a sauna for early season hunts. But being in the middle of that area, it may be worth it when we replace that stand to build and air tight blind.

 

[Charlieyca]

Spring break was spent on vacation in florida, but had one afternoon at the farm to look things over. Had a pair of killdeer (bird) that was hanging out in my normal parking spot. I stopped in the road to see what was up and they let me get abotu 3 ft away before I saw these....

This is an old loading deck for when property was logged. You can see what the soil looks like, but i did get some rye and little bit of clover to grow and help speed up the decomp.

 

[Charlieyca]

Pear tree came back nicely after a late frost blackened most of its leaves. Others are a little thinner than this one. Don't judge the black pipe, it has worked for me so far and all new trees get tubes (knocks on wood).

 

[Charlieyca]

Here is a shooting lane (maybe 15 ft wide) with partial shade in the mornings as you can see in the picture, but full sun in the afternoons.

Spring oats, crimson clover, hairy vetch and some radishes in this mix. For some reason radish are loving the shady side.

 

[Charlieyca]

here is the view looking down the lane with box stand behind me. Brown spot halfway down was thick grass that needed 2nd round of gly to die off.

 

[Charlieyca]

This is the road that connects the front and middle sections of my farm. It was the first area I planted 2 years ago when we bought the farm. Same thing each year but it keeps getting taller and thicker. Thanks Paul knox. Rye is going to seed, not as tall as i would like, but has to share with clover.

 

[Charlieyca]

My oldest has a way of getting into every picture I take. This is my white clover patch near the front of the farm. The foreground is a last fall planted with nurse crop of rye. The background was fall planted a year ago with a nurse crop of oats that is long gone. You can see the rye here is up over my 3 year olds head.

Leaving the rye standing for turkeys.

Checked in on all 120 plus seedlings planted. 2 of the 20 arbor day trees woke up from dormancy! TWO! I only found 5 out of 100 from conservation services out of virginia that were not waking up and showing signs of life.

 

[Charlieyca]

Here was white clover with rye nurse crop a little over 2 weeks ago, rye has since taken off!

Seed man was out of oats and I needed something to fill in some bare spots in my brassicas/crimson clover plot from the fall (clover filled in nicely after brassicas died out). Lots of weeds mixed in, but there was good moisture when I spread seed and got very good germination and should help to limit the weeds come summer time.

 

[Charlieyca]

After reading about Red osier dogwood working in wet and poor soil, I wanted to try it out. I tubed some and left some untubed to both gauge browse and monitor spreading. Here is one just a week or so after planting. Really excited about these that border my mulch pile and a low swampy area. One of the tubed trees is only 3 or 4 inches from topping out of the tube!

Here is a picture of ROD I took while at our zoo. notice it is completed surrounded by water and there were many more the same way.

 

[Merle Hawggard]

Plots are looking great! It's awesome to be able to have the family come and help too. I get a lot more done myself when the boys show up.

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[Charlieyca]

Cleared a new shooting lane for my dads stand. View towards the stand and down the lane.

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[Charlieyca]

Did some edge feathering alongside one of my plots, hazelnuts and chinquapins alternating down the side of rye and crimson clover. Going to bushhog it high in august and keep it brushy. Used tree tops to block all but 3 entrances to the plot.

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[Charlieyca]

Before and after

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[Charlieyca]

You cant see it as good in the pictures, but we cleared 15ft along both sides of this plot of pines and sweet gums. 2 oaks were covered up and we released around them. Very few valuable trees in this section. A few scatterred water and white oaks.

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[Charlieyca]

Cleared a new shooting lane for my dads stand. View towards the stand and down the lane.

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If you look to the left of the new lane you can see a few tall bare trees left standing. That is my south neighbors clearcut from this winter. I would like to be able to catch deer coming from my property to his clearcut as it thickens up over the next few years. But I dont want him to be able to see into my lane. What size buffer would you leave in between the property line? I want it to be blockaded from his view, but still allow deer to pass through where I can see them. As you can tell from the picture, it is really thick briars and pines through here.