Wilkes County Georgia

Great update possum! Man you guys wasted no time getting started on the habitat projects. Great job on the trapping and opened areas look great. Lots of memory maker moments going on at your place these days. I swear, I can't hardly find room to plant more trees without taking out a bunch.
 
congrats on your successful trapping season. Cool getting your first yote and cat--might have saved a few fawns this year.
Great update and getting the family involved. Lifetime memories.

God Bless
todd
 
IMG_1396.JPG Turkey season is now in full swing and so far we have had a great season.
March 11th was a special youth turkey season and John toted a 20ga shotgun for the first time after a gobbler.

We heard lots of gobbles and about 8:00 we called in three jakes.
The jakes put on a great show. They gobbled, strutted and came straight in to our set up. I told John he could shoot whichever one he wanted but he was not able to get the gun raised up high enough to put it on their head. They were a little uphill from us and they didn't stay in range long enough to let John get repositioned.
It was an awesome hunt though!

The next weekend we went back in to that spot and work a bird all morning. After a while the gobbler finally started getting close. He was just across the creek (property line) from us. We could hear the gobblers foot steps in the leaves and just as we started getting really exited our neighbor shoots and kills the bird.
We could hear the flapping of the bird on the ground but never saw him.
We slipped out and moved around to the other side of the property but didn't hear any more gobblers.
We still had a great hunt and John is now hooked on turkey hunting.
It's tough though on small acreages like ours. The birds seem to always be on the neighbors land.
Everything I've been this season I have seen hens on our place so I'm hopeful a gobbler will move in and someone will connect soon!

Me and John did find a new giant rock that is propably 12' tall and perfectly round. He climbed it to get a birds eye view of the holler.
 
IMG_1397.JPG In checking my tree plantings I've found that I have 100% survival so far of the 50 sawtooth, 10 pears, 10 persimmons and 5 crab apples we planted.

And the food plots are getting heavy use! It's bad when your foodplot looks better than your yard at home.
 
I sprayed round up on the plots and am going to be planting a mixture of cowpeas, sunn hemp, buckwheat and alyce clover in a couple weeks.
 
Another bit of great news we got recently is that we made an offer to buy 43 more acres that borders us and the family accepted our offer!
We are closing at the end of April.
This new land is all 15-20 year old pines. I am planning on thinning the pines and creating some small food plots in the next few months. More updates to come!
 
Wow good stuff. Turkey hunts are fun and addictive. Keep him after them. It will happen. Congrats on trees and adjoining property. Now you have neighbor's land where the birds are!!
 
Possum...Congrats on the additional land purchase. Did the same in 2012 when I purchased the adjoining tract. At the time I was a bit apprehensive about adding more land. Apprehension didn't last long. So glad I did and I bet you feel the same. Looking forward to following your progression on the new land!
 
Our excitement about the new land purchase was short lived. The closing attorney found an issue with the signatures from the family members selling.
It turns out one of the heirs is deceased and had no will, which means his portion goes to his children. Problem is, his children are both minors and therefore cannot sign anything. The mother could petition the court but she is unlikely to do that.
The children are 16 and 17 so good news is everything should be in order for the sale in less than 24 months. (As long as no one else dies)
This 43 acres is actually three tracts. 9, 22 and 12 acres. The twelve acres may still be able to close on soon. That owner's wife's name was on deed and she passed away last year leaving it the children. Luckily those children are over 18 so unless they give the dad trouble about selling, we should be able to buy that tract in the next few weeks.
 
This family and land has a very interesting story behind it.
The family are the black descendants of a very wealthy plantation owner.
The man who sold me our 78 acres said his great great grandmother came over on a slave boat from Africa. She had 11 children by her owner.
Those children inherited the plantation and it has remained in that one family for over 200 years until we purchased last May.
There are still remnants of slave cabins and even remains of a 150 year old cabin that the previous owner's father was born in. I asked him why he would want to sell this land that has so much of his family history? He said its all been passed down so many times and so many of his kin own such small percentages that no one cares anything about it. They all live in Atlanta, no one helps him pay the taxes and so he just decided to sell and be done with looking after it.
its sad in a way but we are glad we are the ones who came across it. I hope it may remain in our family name for a long time now.
 
IMG_1422.JPG IMG_1483.JPG Last spring I made my first attempt at planting summer food plots. With a combination of poor preperation, heavy deer grazing pressure and a moderate drought, they were a complete failure.
Last fall with a severe drought, my fall plots were even worse!
So this year I am saying third time is a charm and trying to get some food plots for the deer.
The new 12 acres has a quarter acre field which now gives me just a little over 2 acres total plots on 89 acres.
I know I won't feed the herd with this but I like giving the does some extra forage and getting them used to feeding on our property as much as possible until deer season comes. In February I believe it was, I added 2000 lbs of pellet lime on the two acres. I put out 2000 lbs last year but soil test this winter still called for another 1000 lbs per acre.
In mid April I sprayed glyphosate and gave it two weeks to work.
At the end of April we put out fertilizer and disked everything.
I put out 25lbs Sunn hemp, 25 lbs iron clay cow peas, 25 lbs buck wheat and 10lbs alyce clover.
I knew the cowpeas weren't going to make it but the alyce clover is supposed to withstand heavy grazing.
All but one plot is doing well right now last I checked. That one plot we call the swamp plot is 1/2 acre in the best location on the land.
Last couple weeks I've been getting 50+ pictures a night of groups of does feeding in it. When I checked a few days ago there was nothing but bare 3" stems. I'm hoping the other plots don't get killed too!
 
Last edited:
IMG_1497.JPG this weed was pretty enough to take a picture of before a chopped it down. I think it's milk thistle?
 
IMG_1489.JPG I got a few pictures of this giant doe that comes through every once in a while. My guess is she is over 150 lbs? Very uncommon to see a doe like this around here. We named her Heffer
 
Back
Top