Frank's outdoors...

The last week has really got the blood pumping with cooler morning temperatures.  The fever is in! I need to take some pictures now that I have disc-ed and seeded the field, but here is the food plot right after it was mowed with a brush hog.  I put out Tecomate MAX Attract mixed with Monster Mix ( recommended for my zone on the Tecomate website ).  They also noted Chicory, but I didn't find it in stock at Gander Mountain . Also attached a picture of my "penthouse" blind ( 4x6 Shadow Hunter ) that is 6' tall on Shadow Hunter elevators .  The installation of elevators went quite smooth.  The instructions are easy to follow, and actually the biggest issue we had is related to my underpowered cordless drill.  I have a 14volt Ryobi, and really need an 18volt.  More power, more torque, longer battery life, etc... the Ryobi was actually fine brand new, but it definitely was wiped out.  If I had other jobs to do that day, I would have bee...

It is that time of year again, time to start the preparation before summer and it gets to hot to do any real work.  I have some lane clearing I want to do, foot plot setup, and feeder maintenance.  The last one is where I really need some help. I have 2 of the Academy brand Game Winner Low Boy feeders .  LOVE THEM.  They are low to the ground and easy to load/unload.  The biggest issue I have with them is the control/timer is separated from the motor box.  You then have this conduit going from the controller box to the motor, and as noted last year the raccoons were hanging on this and did some pretty good damage here... so that is a significant design flaw.  Academy brand Game Winner Low Boy feeder I went to the lease a few weeks ago to get my batteries out and remove the remaining few kernels of corn from the feeders, and found on of my Low Boys was inoperable.  Not sure if its the cable disaster noted above, if the motor died, etc, bu...

Alright, we are 4 weeks from opening day of rifle season here in Texas, and I have everything ready.  I went out to the lease on Sunday afternoon during the first major rain in over 6 months!  Finally got my Polaris "muddy". On Friday, my buddy Mark and his friend Gary took a tractor and brush hog and cut down my field at a finishing cut length, which looked fantastic.  On Sunday, when I got there I took my new harrow, dragged it over the field with the needles down to really scratch the wet, muddy dirt/sand mixture.  It was a lot muddier than I thought.  I believed it was primarily sand, but the amount of soil is quite surprising and a pleasant one at that.  After that it was seeding time.  I used the Whitetail Institute - Imperial Whitetail Extreme seed and that covered half of my field.  The other half I covered with Evolved Harvest Throw & Grow .  Both of these I picked up at Gander Mountain.  Now it was time to fertilize....

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...