Country Roads

[Mitch123]

Have been on here for about a year now and finally going to attempt one of these. For warning my pictures of the property lines and outline might not be the best. I’m using a bunch of the HuntStand App screen shots since I’m a frequent user of the app. Located in the mountains of eastern West Virginia, about 20 miles south of the small town of Franklin. The land itself is about 1000 acres of mainly timbered slopes. Ag lands are down in the valley but our hunt camp is nestled 2 miles off the road. Food plots are very important to us, we plant alfalfa, clover, chicory as our main summer plots then in the fall we rotate a lot of oats, rye and turnips. Our deer density is very high so most of the times our plots get mowed down before they can really mature but this year we had a little success with some electric fencing. The main issue we have is BEAR. The past 3 seasons Pendleton County, has been one of the top, if not the top killing county for bear. The lovely state has made a handful
of other counties a 2 bear bag limit but still limits us to 1.

Our cabin is located right above the pond there. It is an old farm house that was built in the 1930s. The pond is stocked with bass, cats and trout and it’s always fun doing some fly fishing. The green areas outlined are some of our food plots.

Our bucks are finally starting to show up on camera. It never fails that we don’t see many shooters out there till mid to late July. As you can tell we also have some issues with the bear like I’ve said.

There is my start! Looking forward to documenting the process from here on out with more pictures. Thanks for all of the input and insight that I’ve already received from this site. Looking forward to learning more and hopefully helping out some other people.


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[dogghr]

Glad you are starting this thread Mitch. Always good to have some rep from the Mountain State. Now maybe I can retire mine as everyone has seen my clover a thousand times.
I grew up hunting in your area near Brandywine up Millers run. Dad would take us up there with tent for the wk. to bowhunt. Good memories.
I also have a friend in Upper Tract. And I've backpacked most that country especially North Fork Mnt.
Bears here have been reduced some by several years of seasons with 3 or more allowed I think. And I put out no corn, it attracts them like bees to honey. You are in a beautiful area and have some nice deer. Thanks for showing.

 

[Mitch123]

Glad you are starting this thread Mitch. Always good to have some rep from the Mountain State. Now maybe I can retire mine as everyone has seen my clover a thousand times.
I grew up hunting in your area near Brandywine up Millers run. Dad would take us up there with tent for the wk. to bowhunt. Good memories.
I also have a friend in Upper Tract. And I've backpacked most that country especially North Fork Mnt.
Bears here have been reduced some by several years of seasons with 3 or more allowed I think. And I put out no corn, it attracts them like bees to honey. You are in a beautiful area and have some nice deer. Thanks for showing.

We have a cabin in Fort Sybert as well. My mother grew up in Franklin and a lot of her family is from Sugar Grove. I have been all up and down the east coast, even out West a few times but nothing compares to the beautiful blue ridge mountains.

 

[buckhunter10]

love WV threads! cant wait to follow along!

 

[Mitch123]

Talk about wet lately, as of yesterday we have already met our yearly rain total. This weekend I’m going to start taking some trees back to camp to get them planted. We have the means to water the trees if and when it ever dries up, but with the rest of this week and next covered with chances of rain I’m going to plant. Hopefully this weekend we will also get a chance to spray where we intend to plant some turnips, oats and rye. Haven’t had a chance to spray yet with all the rain, hopefully will get the seed in the ground in the next week or two. Mother Nature has a mind of her own, and just hoping we don’t have a bone dry August and September like last year or the food plotting won’t matter at all.


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[Turkish]

Any turkeys in them hills? WV always looked to be good turkey woods, but I never hear much about it.

 

[Mitch123]

Any turkeys in them hills? WV always looked to be good turkey woods, but I never hear much about it.

This was my bird and one of 4 at our camp. We have some birds, I swear that there is nothing like a mountain bird. They aren’t as vocal as they used to be and boy are the skidish, makes for some very hard hunting. We didn’t kill a spring gobbler the previous year in camp. This year we saw the most turkeys we have ever seen, but with a really wet spring have only seen one picture on camera of a hen and some little ones.



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[Mitch123]

Got some trees in the ground. The 3 pictured are American Cheatnuts that I received from the ACF back in February or March. They are looking great and can only hope that they continue to grow. I also planted some sawtooth and swamp white oaks, along with a handful of Chinese chestnuts on the opposite side of the property.

Also got some stands together. This field and stream model might be my favorite one. Strong sturdy and the nuts and bolts were labeled with the steps! Have had headaches with too many other brands before.

Also snapped a brief picture of our attempt at an orchard. Two winters ago, a friend of ours who is in the cider business gave us 30 Apple trees of various types. (ones that I forget) We have had around a 90 percent success rate with these transplants so far. Hopefully in a couple more years we start to get some apples.


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[weekender21]

It's great to see another mountain property on the forum! Your property looks great. That tree stand has excellent reviews online.

 

[Mitch123]

Is this Giant Miscanthus? My grandpa planted this years ago in his back yard, I’m guessing with the thought of transplanting it to the cabin eventually. I bought some rhizomes from Maple River last year and planted them as a screen in a few places and they look a like. Little did I know, there was a full backyard of it. I’m not sure if it’s giant, but from the looks of it I believe it is some sort of Miscanthus anyways.

 

[Triple C]

Mitch...Another forum member tagging along here. Great memories hunting in the mountaineer state. Have a good friend in Barboursville that has a place up near the Kanawha / Ohio river. Spent some time up there in the mid to late 90s chasing deer and turkey. If you happen to travel thru Barboursville and see a big pink elephant in front of an office drop in and tell em AC said hello.

 

[Mitch123]

Mitch...Another forum member tagging along here. Great memories hunting in the mountaineer state. Have a good friend in Barboursville that has a place up near the Kanawha / Ohio river. Spent some time up there in the mid to late 90s chasing deer and turkey. If you happen to travel thru Barboursville and see a big pink elephant in front of an office drop in and tell em AC said hello.

I have some good friends that I met in college that live in that area. I also worked with the Jim C Hamer lumber company for one summer. They have some big bucks down in the southern part of the state that is for sure!

 

[Mitch123]

Another wet weekend, thunder storms all weekend. Accumulation of about two inches. Man I wish we had our seed in the ground, if only it can dry out some! Everything is sprayed up, looking like we might get a chance this weekend to finally get it done, fingers crossed.

Did get to go to the tractor parade, luckily it didn’t get rained out. Always good to see family members and get to hangout with them. Pictured is my little cousin, he loves tractors and said this was his favorite day of the year.

One less coyote to worry about come trapping season. Had a blood trail of her brother going through the tall grass but lost it after about 50 yards. Defiantly this years pups I would say. 300 yards was an easy shot for the 22.250.

Clover patch we had that was overgrown with grass and weeds 2 weeks ago. Mowed it, and sprayed it with some Imox and it has come back in force.

Few trial cam pics as well.


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[gut_pile]

Looking forward to following along

 

[Mitch123]

Another good weekend of work. Weather back in the mountains was amazing. Got down to 51 degrees back in the mountains, which made for some good sleeping! One of our hunt camp members brought his bobcat back for the weekend, with all the rain we have had some road work was a necessity. He was also able to push back some fields, which allowed for some nice tree planting.

Mowed all of our clover plots this weekend, then sprayed. Clover was already thick, can’t wait to see how heavy it comes back now.

This is what we call by the shooting bench, or below the barn. Lies right behind the pond and the house. The two pictures are of our alfalfa. RR Alfalfa has been a huge draw for us. That field is on the left, the field in the middle we planted two weeks ago with turnips, the third and final field on the right was planted this week with an oats and rye mix. We had decent success burning the field, but it didn’t quite go as well as we would have liked it to.

First picture is one of our old apple trees in what we call the orchard. It’s loaded with apples every year. The second picture is one of our 5 year old DCOs. It has about 24 burrs on it this year!

Also finally got the fly rod and the waders out again. It has been about three and a half months since I broke my leg. This was the first time I’ve felt strong enough to put it to the test fishing and walking in the river. It is still shaky, but I’m glad to be healing up and getting ready for hunting season. Praise the lord for both of those.

All in all we are about ready for hunting season. We get an early bear season September 22nd, which is in for a week. Then archery season comes in the following Saturday. The next two weekends I won’t have any updates. Going down to Charlotte to watch the Mountaineers take on Tennessee. So glad that football season is back! The weekend after that I’m going fishing out of the Oregon inlet in hope of catching some big ole billfish! Best of luck to everyone getting ready for the seasons. LETS GO MOUNTAINEERS!


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[OkieKubota]

How did you break your leg? That x-ray brings up painful memories of my youth...

 

[Mitch123]

How did you break your leg? That x-ray brings up painful memories of my youth...

Playing baseball, was on first tagging up going to second base. Went to shift my weight and crack. It was a compound fracture and now I’m the proud owner of a titanium rod and a couple of screws. Played baseball, football and basketball in high school and never had any issues. Doctors say it was just a freak accident.

 

[T-Max]

Place looks great! That’s a tough draw on the leg. I have escaped traumatic injury thus far in my life, but that is a reminder that you don’t have to do crazy s@$! to get hurt pretty bad... I hope your recovery continues as planned!


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[dogghr]

Place looks awesome. You will appreciate that leg one day for predicting the weather speaking from experience. Place looks great. I fish a lot over the mountain on part of the South Fork. We have early bear hunt in come counties this weekend, my bear count is down this year with only one on video. No complaints. Good luck with the deer.

 

[Mitch123]

Any Vols fans in here? Sorry for the butt whipping but was nice to meet some of the fan base. Hopefully y’all had a good experience with the our fans as well.

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