Familytradition
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The walnuts from the berm of the middle pond.
Dugout
- Thread starter Familytradition
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The walnuts from the berm of the middle pond.
Familytradition
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Typical picture of the creek.
Familytradition
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The kid's/grandpa's shooting house. Not the final resting place. I'm not a fan of hunting over the plots, but I will do whatever I can to provide those 5 with good shots and easy access.
Familytradition
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I killed the first and only 2 deer off of the place last year. I have a natural little funnel made by the creek and the eastern ridge line on the north property line. Several mature oaks occupy about an acre around the creek. Great for west and southwest winds. I knew the first time that I saw this area that many deer would fall into this trap. The setup still needs tweaked, but it has worked well so far.
Familytradition
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This buck is very special to me. It is my largest to date and the first off of our own farm. It also filled a long standing goal of mine. This buck put 3 generations of my family into the Hoosier Record Book. We have worked hard for years on our leases to produce the best bucks possible. We do this by working together and pooling resources; we are not wealthy. My grandfather was a block mason, my dad sells lumber, and I'm a chemist. Anybody can do what we do. Learn great woodsmanship and let the bucks grow. Our methods have produced 2 200 inch bucks. The first one was shot by my grandfather when I was in college and was recovered by a nieghbor's dog after we failed to find him and my dads buck broke off 3 points that cost him Boone and Crockett and 200 inches.
Familytradition
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Picture showing the maturity of the white oak plantation. These are already producing good amounts of acorns.
Very nice!I killed the first and only 2 deer off of the place last year. I have a natural little funnel made by the creek and the eastern ridge line on the north property line. Several mature oaks occupy about an acre around the creek. Great for west and southwest winds. I knew the first time that I saw this area that many deer would fall into this trap. The setup still needs tweaked, but it has worked well so far.
Familytradition
Active Member
These are 4 of my grandpa's biggest. He is 79 and still going strong. He is slow to have a mount done now; he has some great sets of antlers hanging in the garage. His rattling set is of another bruiser that used to hang over my club house as a kid. I'm so thankful he and dad took me to the outdoors as much as they did. I may try a softer introduction with my son, however. Grandpa left me alone in a deer stand when I was 8; saying don't tell your mom as he climbed down and went to another stand because I moved too much. I emptied my 870 on a herd of deer 300 yards away later that year. I was so far away they didn't even run off.
The sayings about an old man planting trees that he will never see shade/apples/nuts from apply. He starts trees every spring still. This year he is nursing 10 red oaks along.
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Familytradition
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No job is too big. Here are some more photos of the house from last Labor Day weekend when we bought the place. At least the lights worked.
Familytradition
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Here are some of the same shots during our remodel.
Familytradition
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Here is a view looking down the ridge to the house.
Familytradition
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This is the deer that started my obsession. I was in first first grade and I was home sick from school(a pattern that was later repeated many times in November). My dad called my mom and told her to bring me to Grandpa's house; he had killed his first buck. I had never seen anything cooler than this massive animal. His shoulders touched the garage floor when they cranked him up. My dad was extremely excited too; he dropped the rack and broke a tip off. He had never caped a deer and cut it too short; Grandpa just knocked the racks off back then. I used the the legs to chase my sister and cousins around my Grandparent's house the rest of the winter; Grandma made me throw them away when they started to smell.
This deer only made an already bad obsession worse. I played with pheasants from my family's yearly pheasant hunt on Thanksgiving all through diner; I am not the kind of guy that misses a meal. I wanted nothing more in the world than to start hunting. My Grandpa was glad to start taking me; he used me as an extra beagle the next several winters until I could carry the 410.
Familytradition
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One of my goals is to make sure that I am good steward of the land and that keep/make habitat that animals besides deer enjoy. I have a hill between the front 2 springs that I had a sneaky suspicion had a cave located in it. I am still not sure how big it is, but it is an absolute apartment building for wildlife. I put a trail camera at one of the entrances. So far I have a pictures of raccoons, groundhog, opossum, bats, woo-drat, mouse, and a chipmunk using the hole.
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Familytradition
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I have turkey pictures! I know for some they may be annoying to get a bunch of camera pictures of, but where I am from in Indiana they are very rare.
Familytradition
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My wife thought that I was having a fit when I pulled it up. This was the first good camera that I had; I never expected a buck like that to show up. That buck is standing where he was killed 2 months later. The camera doesn't show the ladder stand off to the left. My grandpa's buck was shot in the same place, but from a different tree. We called this the cherry tree stand; 8 mature bucks were killed here over the course of 15 years. My grandpa hunted this stand pretty religiously. He stopped one day too early in 2012. Dad killed droptine the next morning.That is one of the coolest trail cam pics i have seen in a long time. Looks like i have a new background Picture for my computer!
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