Well, I finally managed to spend couple weekends and 10 strait days out in my property now. My neighbor went back north for the summer and will return around end of October. It's very nice out there with nobody around and quiet. Our closest neighbor is about 600 yards away. We don't have a house on it so we lived in a tent for first few times and recently we got a small 16' camper to pull out there since we are spending longer periods and plan to spend even long periods in future.
I've been spending a lot of time in the woods trying to see games and study all the whens and where about them. I also set up a small "feeding area" where I spread a handfull of corn every evening when I'm there. It's part of a "game trail" where I see a lot of hog prints. Some mornings I see that hogs came and ate all the corn during the night while other days they don't get touched. Couple weeks ago I placed a ladder next to a tree near the feeding area and then came out next morning around 5:30AM and sat up there to see what I could see. Sure enough around 6:30AM before the sun came up I see one small pig then two and within few seconds there are six that came in from the citrus grove direction. There were total of 11 ranging from couple of small 25 pound pig to a large 170+ pound hog. They were all feeding on the corn. Then all of sudden (maybe 45 seconds later) they all move on towards the WMA. I spend next three morning out there and saw a different group of 8 hogs on the third day. I also spend some evenings out there but never seen them. I had noticed a lot of fresh tracks in the back part of my property closer to the drainage canal (actually it's a ditch) so I placed a ladder out there too. I'm going to spend some time out in that ladder next weekend.
There are other games out there too. My wife saw a doe out by the road couple times and I've seen couple of them near the canal. None are huge but I've never seen a huge deer in FL except in Disney World property. Couple of times we've seen turkeys including a pair of hens that walked into our camp one morning. Only thing I haven't seen is squirrels out there... not one.
Next month we plan to spend couple days out there and I plan on taking my first pig at that time... if I get a shot.
In the meantime I'm finishing up a 50 yard shooting range for my son, wife and I to shoot our 22 rifles. I got the berm up to almost 5 feet high high so I still have 2 feet to go. It's a lot of work but enjoying sweating and working with my hands.
Oh, one more thing...
I plan on getting two or three game cameras to put along some likely areas of travel to see what, when and where they are during the week when we are not there.
Sounds cool. I'd love to have property to set up a shooting range for my family
What he said! It sounds way cool
According to my neighbor, based on his experience there, I can take about a pig per month from my property.
He said any more than that and hog traffic will start to slow down and even stop for a while.
Looking forward to shooting my first living animal and feeding my family with it.
I'm not sure if the loud sound of 22lr rifles from the range will keep animals away so we are just going to shoot my 22lr supressed rifles.
We purchased this place after checking into some leases in southern FL. I didn't realize how expensive leases were down here so we just purchased this property instead. Couple years of lease payments will pay for it.
