Country Roads

[Mitch123]

Winter time is finally leaving the mountains of WV. Over the past few weeks we have been going back getting camp fired back up. A few things we have done over the last few weeks are fertilizing, warm season grass burnings and fixing up our old barn. Turkey season also started today!

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[dogghr]

Congrats on the turkey. What so you get to come up in your field burnings or are you just planting back in to them.? They did some areas of controlled burn in your locale on national forest property. Not sure what affect 20 ac has on millions of acres. I think it just PR to compensate for the public not fighting any logging on public land anymore.

 

[lakngolf]

Pretty country. Good job on Turkey

 

[Mitch123]

Congrats on the turkey. What so you get to come up in your field burnings or are you just planting back in to them.? They did some areas of controlled burn in your locale on national forest property. Not sure what affect 20 ac has on millions of acres. I think it just PR to compensate for the public not fighting any logging on public land anymore.

Out burnings were some WSG patches that my grandad planted years ago. They had never been burned, until now. They are something that I would love to get some more of. For cover, screens etc, just haven’t got around to it. I would absolutely love to burn some of our woods, but don’t quite have the man power or the nerve to do that.

 

[Mitch123]

What’s going on with my trees here? I believe it is a little to much sun. I put more shade paper down, but just wanted to see if anyone thought it was anything else.


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[Mitch123]

Has been a busy last few weekends. After this weekend we can say we are mowed, and all sprayed up. Our clover and alfalfa is starting to really look good. Normally we haven’t had the opportunity to get mowed and sprayed up this early. Our main project has been our old barn. The roof is leaking and the rafters are in rough shape.

We lost one of the middle rows of cedar posts. This will open up our space a lot. In order to lose one of the middle rows though, we had to span 24 foot, 16 inch LVLs.

After the 24 footers, we used 12 footers to finish off the span. As you can tell the old oak beams were laid down the wrong way, instead of vertical they were horizontal. Making them lose much of their strength and causing the dips over 100 years.

We also poured some piers to get our pressure treated 6x6s off of the ground. All in all it has been a task, many hydraulic jacks and lots of lifting but now the main task is out of the way. Now we will run some support beams around the sides and get some stone down on the ground and it should be good to go for another 100 years!

The good news is also that some of our apple trees will have fruit this year! These trees were planted 4 years ago as 1-2 year old trees that were given to us.


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[dogghr]

That is odd the old timers didn't lay those supports vertical. Glad you got it upgraded for another 100 years.

 

[Mitch123]

Clover is king in our mountains! Cleth has become our best friend, we have tried many things Imox, Burytec etc but Cleth seems to do the best since grass seems to be our biggest enemy.

Thistles on the other hand tend to get the spot spray with roundup. By far not the best job and is very tedious, but with 2-3 guys and some gallon sprayers it is easy to absolutely knock out the thistles.

Our alfalfa plot has been a thorn in our side. It’s only about an acre and the deer absolutely hammer it. Last year we put up a fence and tried to charge it but with no success. This year we got a new charger and will see what we have. Fingers crossed.


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[Mitch123]

Back from the beach Friday evening, to the mountains Saturday morning. The beach is nice but the mountains are home! Camp needs mowed, hopefully get to that in the next week or two. A good sprayer though is KING, our rig has saved us all kinds of heartache since we got it.

Got a few cams up finally, and the bucks are showing up! Unfortunately, we still have bear around.

I have a question for any experts following along, is this a Chickasaw plum?

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[Hoosierhunting]

Place is looking great, not sure on the plum


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[Triple C]

Couple of nice bucks coming along this year. Place looks great!

 

[buckdeer1]

nope chickasaw plum is a shrub also called sandhill plum

 

[Mitch123]

Been a while since I’ve updated y’all on the ins and out of camp. Starting with some food plots. We had about 3-4 acres of plots coming on and where looking great. We planted early, around the first week or two in August if I remember correctly. Some good rains came along and the plots were looking great, that is until last week a herd of the neighbors cows got lose and just happened to end up in our plots. Doesn’t take long for 15 heifers to mow down some plots .

Went to Colorado for my first ever elk hunt. The landscape was beautiful and the people were so very nice. Unfortunately we didn’t lay eyes or ears on an elk in a week after covering around 75 miles. There is something to be said about the beautiful blue ridge mountains though, they are definitely home.

We have been in the process of draining our pond. It’s spring fed and a few years ago we also bought an aeration unit in order to help out trout. Or so we thought, for years the pond has always had bass, catfish, crappie and perch in it. We TRIED to stock some trout the other year only to have them all eaten up by what we believe to be the bass. So we started a 4 inch siphon about 3 weeks ago. It’s stopped on us 4 different times for some unknown reason but the pond is down about 12 feet now. Once it gets low enough we are going to go in and net and catch all the fish we can to then relocate to our other pond. Starting over the pond will then be filled with only trout.

This coming Saturday we are one of the handful of counties in WV that gets an early bear season. It is in for 6 days and then bow season comes in the 28th. My goal this year is to finally stick a nice buck with my bow. Below are some just for fun pics.

The one of the buck shedding his velvet is one of my all time favorite pics we have gotten on a trial cam before! God bless!


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[Mitch123]

Got my buck back today! Makes me that more excited to get in the woods this weekend.


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[T-Max]

I would think so!!!

 

[Mitch123]

Nice to have buddies in Alaska! Box full of fresh salmon in the mail today.


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[Mitch123]

I’m back! Well haven’t gone anywhere, have been poking around here for some time but wanted to get back into the habitat and property tour page! Picture attached is for attention, he’s the biggest buck of my life. Not the mountains of WV obviously, Kansas buck.

 

[Native Hunter]

Congratulations Mitch. Dandy deer.

 

[Drycreek]

Nice buck Mitch, congrats !

 

[Mitch123]

Got lucky on some traps! Have seen trial pics of this guy and finally caught up with him in n a snare! Got a blonde one years ago and tanned him out, looking forward to doing him the same way!