My last post concerning the last years food plot was on 10-09-'18 the day before Michael came ashore. My wife and I have been through lots of hurricanes as children and several in the 50+ years we've been married but never had we experienced a storm quite like this! First I am thankfufl to the Lord for the protection he afforded us, our house was not damaged, we still have a big Live Oak and a big old growth Long Leaf Pine literally inches from our house, still standing tall while all around us trees were blown to the ground. We have oaks, Cedars/Junipers, Pines and everything else on the ground but not those adjacent to the house. Thank you, Lord! Our "rough woods", the natural growth woods to the west of our house, 20 acres, is like a jumble d up bowl of spaghetti. Pine and oaks wrapped with large grape vines and green briars so twisted and tangled it is impossible to move through it without great effort. It took me about an hour to find the grandsons' shooting house and the camera that was watching the two trails near the stand. The house is fine, you just can't get to it and the camera was fine, had over 6000 pictures of some leaves after the storm passed. Each time the breeze would blow it would snap a 3 shot picture.
A few days before the storm hit I had fertilized the Durana Clover after mowing it. The game camera got my picture as I spread the fertilizer along the clover between the pines:
Here was the last visitor that the camera recorded:
This is what the Wren's Abruzzi Rye looked like a few days after Michael, compare it :to the earlier picture:
This is a shot looking east along the Durana Clover patch now covered with downed pines:
Here is the old faithful pickle barrel corn feeder still standing among the downed timber:
Not to bore y'all but I'll share a few more storm pictures in a little while.
Treefarmer
We have had to make a few changes in our hunting plans, at least for the grandsons' hunting at Thanksgiving. Our place is unbelievably wet! The boys shooting house is inaccessible because of downed timber, the big food plot and Durana Clover is questionable because of standing water and downed timber. I've maintained a membership in a lease that is mostly high sandy hilly land. Well, high sand and lots of rain at least provide a possibility of hunting a spot that is not totally destroyed. The timber on my portion of the lease is 12-15 years old and wasn't completely destroyed by the hurricane as was some of the tracts with older more mature trees.
I did a little recon and found about a dozen pines were down in the two trail road leading to my stand. We sawed the trees into three pieces and came back in the week with the tractor and pushed everything out of the way.
When we got to the stand site, we found my shooting house that had been attached to a big pine for close to 20 years was on the ground. The wind had simply pushed it from the platform, all the nails are still in the hurricane clips that held it to the platform and ladder. Fortunately we had allowed a professor from the Baptist College of Florida to hunt our part of the lease and he left a stand in place from several seasons ago. It is an old utility trailer with roof and a window. I killed a doe while sitting in it last season, the only time I hunted the lease last year. Looks like we'll spend more time over there on the hill than here on the farm at least during the 1st part of the season. Hopefully the rain will let up and we'll be able to get back to something more normal. There was 8.7" of rain during the hurricane, likely more as a lot of it was blowing side ways. We had a week of dry and then it started raining and I noticed so far in November we have already had 8.4". Makes you glad for a front axle on the pickup truck and the tractor!
I have killed a bunch of deer around this old clay pit over the years and hope it will still pay off this season.
Here are some pictures of the cleanup, our old stand and the trailer stand. Miss Joy wouldn't let me go by myself for some reason when I was using the saw. The 2nd picture shows the wind shredded curtain, an old cloth shower curtain.
Hunting was always good on this property but when it was just as good 100 yards from the back door, why drive 3 miles to the lease?
Treefarmer
The "trailer stand" yielded up a little 5 point, 1st deer for a grandson on Thanksgiving (pics in another post). I put a camera close to the big gravity feeder a few days before Thanksgiving and the date strip on the camera is all out of whack, this one went through the hurricane but it did get a bunch of pictures of the 1st buck that wouldn't give the grandson a decent shot. This is an old clay pit that I've been hunting for over 20 years.
Things may get better at the home place but for now we'll be hunting back on the lease.
Treefarmer
Some good pics there
