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...

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....

My buddy Mark and I spent all Saturday morning working on my back blind setup today.  The goal was to get the "rough" food plot done by using the drag harrow, spreading seed, and laying fertilizer as well as preparing some shooting lanes. When we got out there, we got straight to work opening up the main viewing lane down to the feeder.  It was grueling work.  Lots of vines, baby yaupon trees, and oak saplings.  There were several areas where the trees have bent completely over and other trees and dead brush have continued to fall upon them forming a natural bivouac or lean-to shelter.  These things were upwards of 10 feet tall and took us a long time to break down. Food plot and widened view to the feeder  You can see in the food plot picture that there is a significant difference from the way it was originally.  It is very dry and dusty, so we'll need to some rain to get growth for sure.  Also, I put down some lime/fertilizer mixture to ...

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...

Been a while since I have posted.  I have been actively hunting this season trying to get that big buck, and still haven't got him.  I have started watching and prepping (albeit late) my other spot I have scouted on my lease.  It currently has a small hanging feeder on it, and a tree I was using for my climber stand.  I have only sat in it once.  I bought a REAL nice Shadow Hunter blind at Academy in Conroe, and my good buddy Mark help me get it setup (the picture isn't great, but the blind is!). This is it in my garage, nice and new.  I bought a pack of "Elevators" and mounted 3' legs to it and put it in the field.  During the summer, I'll probably lift it to like 8' or so to get better view into the woods. So, I begin muzzleloader season with my new gun I got for Christmas!  I got a Thompson Center Encore Pro Hunter and a Nikon ProStaff scope.  Ready to rock'n'roll! Here is the action I have been seeing after moving my game cam...