Frank's outdoors...

The last 2 years on the lease have seen time and time again tons of raccoons making off with our corn and tearing up our feeders.  Its time to start a predator management plan. We are targeting: Raccoons by trapping only Possums by trapping only Coyotes by calling, stand hunting, and trapping Hogs by hunting and pen trapping (not a varmint, but still trying to rid them) To begin this plan, last year we started by building a hog pen/trap, and have yet to have any success, and I believe a major part of that is due to the gate design.  Plainly, it was a custom job by a friend of my buddy and doesn't stay closed.  Its heavy duty, but the closing mechanism needs to re-engineering.  The door rebounds when the springs close the door, and the pigs have gotten out each time. This year, I am focusing less on the pigs, and more on the smaller predators and varmints, primarily raccoons (pictured above).  I purchased 8 Duke DP Coon Traps .  I will bai...

So the black powder season started on Monday (1/3/2012) in Texas.  Pretty much you get one shot during the sit in the stand.  I went out on Monday evening, and had a pretty exciting sit.  I have my Thompson Center Pro Hunter that I got for Christmas last year.  Around 5:15pm, 3 does shot out from right beside my blind and went every which way in front of me.  Not sure if they caught my scent or heard me move from inside, but they blew out from beside me.  After a bit of snorting, they re-entered the field from all sides, and there were 5 in total.  I saw a doe (or yearling) that had an injured front hoof, and was waiting for an opportunity to take her. Unfortunately, it never presented a shot opportunity.  I had MANY other shots I could have taken, and in hindsight I probably should have.  Either way, it was an exciting evening hunt, with lots of deer activity on my food plot. After the hunt, I gathered my SD card from the camera, and ...

For almost ten years now, my family has a tradition of going on a goose hunt the day after Thanksgiving.  A couple of things caused us to have to do this on Saturday this year.  Well, I'll cut to the chase, the hunt was an absolute bust (from a hunting perspective).  Its ALWAYS a good thing to get out with your friends/family and spent time outdoors. We got to Eagle Lake around 5:30am and were in the field and setup by 6:15am.  By 7 the RAIN was coming regular and steady.  It was raining hard and the wind was blowing.  The birds were there but they were certainly not coming to this field.  We saw lots of flocks and they were moving and even in the wind and rain they were still flying pretty high.  With the front moving through and the cold temperature setting in with the soaking rain (and the fact that we hadn't shot a bird), we called it a day at 10am.  Quite discouraging to say the least.  It is also probably the wettest I have ever ...

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 ...

One of the things I wanted to get done this year was to prepare a "poor man's" quality food plot.  I don't have a tractor, I don't have a disc, I don't have a [fill in the blank].  I can't remember if I posted this previously, but I found out about a device called the " Plotmaster ".  You can buy one of these bad boys for around $4K, but that is not the route I wanted to go for sure.  I figured I would be able to rent of these from the local rental agencies (US Rental, Allied, Sunbelt, etc.) but none of them had even heard of such a device. So, my plan has been focused on how to reasonably prepare my foodplot.  Last year, I had to do a major overhaul on my field as it was overgrown with tall grass and pine tree saplings.  This year, I intend to mow the grass short, possibly till it, then use a drag harrow to level and smooth the seed into the dirt.  The cost of renting a tiller/mower compared to purchasing is a no brainer at the moment, however...

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...

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.