"Top of the Hill"

[dogghr]

I've alway liked your land and thot it would be a great place to hunt. Love the swamp like areas. The work you are doing and have done should only improve. Liked your small plot in ravine. I have one similar of about an ac and like you most used by bucks in daytime and almost impossible to hunt with winds.

 

[Chummer]

With food in place deer started pouring in. Fall of '13 was awesome. I had 13 different bucks and 20+ does using the property. One ML sit mid October I saw 17 deer the last hour of shooting light. I thought I had it all figured out. Then the back to back winters of '14 and '15 killed off 75% of the deer. With nearly 100% kill of all fawns born those years. One of those Februarys the average high for the month was 7. Our snow pack was near normal but the cold is what ultimately did them in.

This is a 5' cage. I call this glacier snow because you can walk on top without snow shows.


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[Chummer]

With most of the herd gone my food played a big role in attracting what was left. Summer of '15 I was down to 1-2 does, but there was hope. A single fawn lived on the place all year.

Mother Nature called of her dogs for the winter of '16 and this year we had 4 fawns and some yearling bucks back for the first time in two years.


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[Chummer]

With only the strongest surviving '15 was the first year of big bucks living on the property. This was a new thing. I had only had photos of the occasional 2-3.5yo moving through. Now I had 4 mature bucks living here all summer.

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[lakngolf]

Good job cummer. Will enjoy following

 

[Chummer]

I've alway liked your land and thot it would be a great place to hunt. Love the swamp like areas. The work you are doing and have done should only improve. Liked your small plot in ravine. I have one similar of about an ac and like you most used by bucks in daytime and almost impossible to hunt with winds.

I get excited every year with the pics there. I haul my climber out every opening day, this year I set it up two weeks early, and nothing. Even with a perfect wind it still swirls. I some what learned my lesson and took bucks with a riffle the last two years a few hundred yards up the ravine where it opens up to flat ground. Pics to follow

 

[Chummer]

So all this stuff gets more fun when you start shooting deer. Before I started this journey my FIL and his crew killed 2 bucks in 20 years. Not the best hunters but still pretty bad results. We have three mature bucks in the last two years and a couple other encounters/missed shots. My buddy even took his first doe with a bow (doe is only open during bow season). I also shot a doe with my bow that year. It was '13 when they were everywhere and I didn't see a harm in taking a couple out. Loose 75% of the herd and you see the harm. I tell myself they would have died with rest but maybe they would have been two of the lucky ones. No more does will be shot.

 

[Chummer]

Last year there were no deer around other than a few nice bucks. I saw 5 deer in 7 weeks of hunting. We did manage to take these two. The 7 was 5.5 and I had pics of him going back to 2012. Never one pick of him during season. He always disappeared in October. After all those years he was taken from our most used stand the weekend after thanksgiving. Some of this stuff has no explanation. My neighbors shoot 10-15 bucks a year so the fact he survived all that is amazing.

My buck last year. Never had a pic of him till this one.

This years buck and the one above both shot at the end of the ravine. It has taken a few years but I am learning where the best spots in this endless wilderness are. He was the biggest deer I had around and was under this apple tree every night.

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[Chummer]

That catches up on the camp land projects. Two years ago I decided I wanted a larger playground that I could do what ever I wanted. Thus the project property was purchased. Its tale starts here.


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[Chummer]

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[dogdoc]

dang boy--you have some tough winters. Three inches of snow in OKC today and it has pretty much shut the city down

Look forward to following along and glad you joined up over here!
todd

 

[Chummer]

Here is a better look at the neighborhood. As you can see I am pretty isolated once you get away from the NW corner. The road that goes through the state land does get a lot of pressure. Ironically the hunt club that borders my camp also hunts here and get the majority of their deer off this 26k acres.

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[Chummer]

With snow in the air I thought I post two of my favorite snow pics.

This one still hangs on the fridge


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[Chummer]

My biggest habitat obsession is apple trees. After releasing all the ones at camp, and seeing all the deer the apples drew in, I was hooked. First order of business at Project Property was an orchard. I had my little helpers, and we planted 12 trees. Lesson learned, do not dig holes with an excavator. It is as hard filling the holes back in as to dig them by hand. Surprisingly this plot has few rocks compared to everywhere else I have dug on the hill.

Trees were watered, mated, and caged. That was it for the year. A few weeks later I planted the orchard in buckwheat


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[Chummer]

This is what it turned into.

Even with drought all year and no watering all the trees survived. Hopefully they take off this year.


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[Chummer]

Next order of business was atv access. Carrying and dragging everything in got old real fast. The problem was every trail in had impassible wet spots. I got this idea from Steve B. I got a great deal on 12 rolls of heavy duty fence. Problem solved!

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[Chummer]

With atv access to the entire property it was time to start working on the food. My plan is to have the main plot in the center of the property and have everything flow around it. There is no ag within miles so this will be a big draw. I was able to remove some stumps with an excavator but I blew a hose and ran out of time to get them all pulled. We were very dry from July to October so the plot never really took off. Hopefully it fills in this spring.

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[wbpdeer]

So the heavy duty fence rolls serve as a matt to hold the wet places together better for four-wheeler traffic. I imagine you did throw in the appropriate size logs in for more of a foundation.

Don't know if I have seen that before. Around here people like to use creek gravel if they can get it. I used blocks out of a torn down car wash that I got for free. They worked well at creating a hard bottom as long as you keep adding until you get what you need.

Glad you found our forum and appreciate your property thread.

Wayne

 

[Chummer]

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[Chummer]

So the heavy duty fence rolls serve as a matt to hold the wet places together better for four-wheeler traffic. I imagine you did throw in the appropriate size logs in for more of a foundation.

Don't know if I have seen that before. Around here people like to use creek gravel if they can get it. I used blocks out of a torn down car wash that I got for free. They worked well at creating a hard bottom as long as you keep adding until you get what you need.

Glad you found our forum and appreciate your property thread.

Wayne

I used a plastic pallet on the first one, then a few logs on the next one. Then I figured out I didn't need either. The spots are like a bog, you sink to your knees. They are narrow for the most part and have very solid ground on both sides. When you exit off the fence the part over the bog raises right back to the top. When you walk over them you don't sink at all. The rolls had to weigh 3-400 pounds each. I would load them on the atv's, back up to the spot, and unroll right over the wet spot. This project exceeded my expectations ten fold.