Frank's outdoors...

Rifle season is a month away (in fact this weekend is opening weekend for bow season in Texas), and the young bucks have FINALLY started showing up on the game cameras.  I didn't see anything legal on the cameras, but its good to see some buck activity moving on the lease.  I saw at least 3 distinct bucks on all 3 cameras.  Pictured below... Also the pigs are back... plural. And a coyote.

I put my Moultrie M-80 game cameras out a few weeks ago to start pre-season scouting.  I went this past weekend to go see what is in the area, and scout the land a bit, prior to putting in my food plot and filling up feeders. Here is what we have so far. 2 does 1 hog 1 snake TALL WILD GRASS! I filled the feeders with corn, and now its now time for serious planning to begin prepping the plot.  The plow decision is still yet to be made, but I am now HEAVILY leaning to the Groundhog MAX for the following reasons:  Cost/Convenience/Maneuverability.  I reset the cameras now that corn is in them, and will check them next weekend to see what has found the corn.  I intend to have my plow in place, and ready to start plot preparation by getting the weeds knocked down, turf chewed up, and seed bed prepped.  Then, I'll come back and plow again, throw seed/fertilizer, and get that going.  Finally, PRAY FOR RAIN!!! The season can't get here f...

Went to the lease the other night to get the game cameras out for some pre-season scouting.  Hadn't been to the property in several months, and was shocked at what I saw.  With the surprising amount of rain we have had in Texas, the trails and fields were VERY overgrown!  I have a lot of work to do to get ready for the season, but things look really healthy, and it was great to see.  I am going to leave the cameras up for a month or so and see what is moving out there.  I will begin feeding at the start of August with supplements and corn.  At that point, I'll get to try out my Duke DP coon traps to keep the coons from eating all my corn! I'll post an update once I get the cameras back, and when I have my action plan in place for the food plot.

I got on my lease real close to the start of last season.  As I sat in my tripod one morning and looked over my barren field, I started making plans for the NEXT season on how I would prepare the field.  The challenge lay before me in acquiring/coordinating getting the work done.  I don't live near my lease, and don't have any equipment.  So basically, borrowing, renting, etc. was going to be the course of action.  As with everything else, life takes over and the season was upon us before I knew it.  I still had been planning but the execution and coordination was becoming the bigger challenge.  Throw in the fact that we hadn't had ANY rain for months and it was looking like it was going to be another barren field... Well, I blogged in the past about how it all came to be... the purchase of the drag harrow, and laying the seed in the first rain in months, etc. etc. etc.  Well, I turned my game camera towards the plot the week leading up to my ta...

The mineral lick I put out at the Culdesac blind is getting some attention!  Pretty cool, I always wondered if they would go near these things...  Proof is in the pudding:

I have been feeding all year round.  I was feeding twice a day during the rifle season last year, and switched to just a morning drop for the rest of the year.  In the next couple of weeks, sometime in early October, I'll change the timers on to add the second (evening) feed session, but for now I just have the feeders running at daybreak.  From the looks of the pictures on the camera, the deer are looking much better than before, and there are even a few fawns in the pics. 2 does and a fawn Doe and a fawn On my other camera is a big black hog.  This one is different from the hog that has the white patches on it.  Looks like an evening hunt is in order to take care of this bad boy... Big Texas Boar I am not sure this pig is as big as the black/white one, but he is a haus and needs to be cleaned out.

Alright, so we pulled the pictures from the camera that is keeping an eye on our hog pen.  This particular pig is all AROUND the trap, but has yet to enter as far as the camera has shown.  We know that the coons are in there picking on the corn, but the boar remains on the outside. Bacon - rear view Bacon - side view Dang 'coons. How do we get this booger in the pen?!?!  We are open to ideas here.  We (my buddy Mark and I) are thinking of making the pen significantly larger and changing the gate and its closing mechanism.  Given the drought, I am thinking a trough of water might be a catalyst...

So I went out to the lease to get ready to start the preparations for November.  I took out 16 bags of corn, fresh feeder batteries and one of my game cameras (and a few suprises below).  Spent about 2 hours getting the corn loaded and batteries changed out.  The biggest thing I noticed was how dry it was.  I mean, the trees look like they are already in the late Texas winter (Jan/Feb)... all the leaves are brown, crispy, and falling to the ground.  As I write this, my house 30 min south of my lease is getting rain, so there is hope. I was at Gander Mountain looking for some food plot help, and they had some mineral licks on sale.  So, I picked up 2 twenty-five pound blocks to put at my main feeders.  I also setup my game camera on the front feeder aimed right at the mineral lick with the feeder in the background.  Now, knowing that there isn't water is a factor, but we'll address that later. I took some pics of my 2 spots where I setup with f...

Alright folks, deer season is just around the corner, and preparations are well into the works.  I wanted to give a breakdown of what I had done last year (my first year on the lease), and what I am doing differently this year.  I will be heading out to the lease this week/end to take some pictures and do other prep in a follow-up post. Last year I started the season with single "permanent" tripod stand at the front of my acreage.  I moved it up into the trees and added a camo skirt to it for extra concealment, and that worked out quite well.   I also got a tripod cleaning station so I had a place to clean game.  I picked up just the thing from Sportsman's Guide .  I had bought from Academy the Low Boy feeder , and that thing is a beast.  I love everything about it, except that the battery and timer unit are in a separate box from motor.  The raccoons hanging on it caused all kinds of issues and I have had to do some reinforcing.  I had bo...

As the season on does in the county where I hunt ends, I took one this Saturday.  It was a nice big doe with a pair of 2 yr olds with it.  They came out at 8am with the sun RIGHT in my eyes... it was 30 degrees.  A beautiful morning.  When I brought my gun up, the sun right in my face made it look like I was in a fog!  Brutal.  Anyway, I shot at her, and the heat made a steam cloud that lasted for a few seconds so I had no idea which direction she went or if I even hit her!  I waited about 15 minutes before going after her.  Found her about 15 yds in the woods.  Thank God for my buddy Mark who hunts the lease as well, as we used his 4 wheeler to tote her back to camp to be cleaned/quartered. Sorry for the quality of the photos, all done with my iPhone... This photo was me just messing around with my iPhone from the blind a few days before.

Spent all day at the lease today prepping it for the season. Rented a walk behind brush cutter, brought a pruner, saws, machetes, etc.  We cleared about an acre or so and it made a huge difference.  After all was cleared, I spread a 25 lb bag of " Plant Easy Deer Food Plot Seed " from Outside Pride Then we toured the rest of the property and put out another small feeder that I have running once a day... it only holds 1 bag of corn, but it is sitting in a real sweet spot with a narrow shooting lane.   More hogs on the feeder, this time a group of 4.

A good friend of mine has been on a deer lease in Willis for a couple of years, which is all of 25 minutes from my house.  Well, he called me this year and said ther were some openings.  It is close and economically friendly, so I am was definitely in!  :) I have access to about 350-400 acres and can put up 2 or 3 blinds.  THis season I don't have a 4 wheeler, so I am stuck walking to/from the blind.  As my lay of the land would not be conducsive to a LONG walk, I have a nice spot a couple hundred yards from the gate.  I put out a feeder, a tripod, and a game camera.  Attached are some pics of the layout. I went out to the lease this afternoon to get the weeks pictures.  There were only 17 pictures on the camera, and the camera quality is below average in my opinion.  Anyway, some hogs, a 5 or 6 point young buck, a couple of does, and a HUGE boar. Its gonna be a good season.  Next year, a bow perhaps???