More August Trail Camera Pictures

Five days ago Dad went down to the farm and sprayed our fall food plots for weeds and grasses a few days after we brush hogged. So, today we went down there to start discing the fields to prepare them for planting before our next rain (not sure when that is going to happen). The grass was dead but still pretty thick. I hope our seed will be able to penetrate the grass and make good soil contact when we do get to plant. Maybe we can plant next week if we can just get some rain to move in. The fields are extremely dry right now.

While we were there I checked some of our cameras. I did get 6 more pictures of Lucky #7 and his bachelor group on a food plot called Field #3. I had placed some Whitetail Institute Kraze mineral attractant. The bucks just love the stuff! I also put up some snow fencing on one side of this field to funnel them through the food plot. Lucky #7 was still in velvet as of yesterday but bucks are starting to show up out of velvet already. In fact, the more I look at the pictures of Can Opener from last week, the more I think he was already out of velvet.

There was no sign of Can Opener on the cameras this time (bummer). So, I decided to move all of the cameras around to new locations to scout other parts of the farm. I probably won't check them for 4 weeks unless I have time to check them after we finish planting next week. My Dad and Cousin think that Can Opener is going to be hard to kill because he moves at night and is skittish. Lucky #7 could push him off the farm if they start establishing their dominance. Do mature bucks battle for territory and push one another out of an area completely? I am not sure. We need to shoot Can Opener before the rut though because those long brow tines are bound to get broken once he starts fighting with other bucks.

On our way home, Dad and I decided to stop and check some of the other cameras that have been up for the last 3 weeks at our other farms. It looks like our newest farm has a couple of shooters on it. That is exciting considering the cameras were not located near any food sources. Here is what they look like:






I call this buck Lefty because he has 7 points on his left side and only 4 main points on his right side. He seems to be a mature buck and is pictured in the 3 photos above.




There are actually three bucks in these 2 pictures. The 2 shooters in front (on the left) with a smaller buck to the right. Both of the larger bucks are difficult to make out but I know they are not Lefty. They appear to be over the 140"+ class. Hopefully I can get more pictures of them to determine what they really are.


This is a group of younger bucks that were hanging out together on another farm. The larger of the 3 will be nice in a couple of years with a lot of character.

August Velvet Pictures

Well, I went down to one of our hunting farms this weekend to do some brush hogging with my Dad. Unfortunately we are going to be replanting half of our food plots on that farm due to a wet spring (weeds) and a miserably hot summer. I do enjoy working the fields with my Dad though. We have a good time together and it is fun to experience the anticipation on how well the food plots will do later in the fall.


I had previously put up 4 trail cameras on that farm, 10 days ago, to start our deer inventory. When I returned home to check the 4 SD cards I had 2400 pictures. It took me half the night to go through all of them. I baited the picture sights with Trophy Rock and corn. Most of the pictures were does and their spotted fawns. However, there were some young bucks and 3 shooter bucks. I always struggle trying to score deer on trail cameras when they are in velvet. Many times the deer end up being larger than they appear on trail cameras, however, sometimes the opposite is true and they end up smaller. This is especially true of velvet pictures.

Here just a few of the pictures that I found on the cameras. I would be curious to here what you think they will score. Let me know what your best guess would be.





1. Slingshot- I believe this deer is a 3 year old. He was a huge 4 point last year. I am not sure he is good to have around with his lack of points (poor genetics) but he is interesting, none the less. He looks like a mule deer.






2. Crab Claw- This buck is pictured last year under the 2010 tab of the blog (November). His G-2's have split and he has added some length to his beams. This buck should also be taken out because he won't amount to much more. I believe he is 4 years old.







3. Can Opener- I do have a picture of a large 8 pointer last winter that had a lot of trash on his bases but I am not sure it is the same deer as this one. I call this deer can opener because his super tall G-1's are split and look like can openers. I'm guessing they are 8" long. This buck seams to be spooky and only moved at dark around 2 o'clock in the morning. He may be hard to kill. He was by himself (not in a bachelor group) and appears to be out of velvet already.





4. Lucky #7- My wife named this deer because he has 7 points on each side and is a typical 14 point. WOW! I have a picture of him as a mainframe 10 last year walking in the sun (see August 24, 2010 posting). I didn't recognize him at first from previous pictures but he seems to be related to the crab claw buck, and another 10 point the property owner killed last season, with his crab claw-like points. He added 4 points this year. This buck was fairly photogenic and walked by 3 of the 4 cameras that I had out.


I can't wait to finish planting the food plots in the next couple of weeks. Then I can focus on practicing with my bow and getting ready for early season. It is only a month away! Once I check them, I will post any pictures that I get from the other cameras that we have out. Take care.

Pictures of fishing in Wisconsin

Steve's bass


Ryder's 5 lb. largemouth bass (caught all by himself). Actually, he picked the spot to fish too.
My brother Ben

Liz's smallmouth bass
Grandma's bass (she still can fish!)
The Cabin

I'm Back!

Well, I have to apologize if you have checked my blog in the last couple of months and found no updates. I have been pretty busy with work, school, vacation and the family life. Last week I put out 8 trail cameras so I should have some pictures to post in a couple of weeks. Hopefully there will be a couple huge bucks to get excited about. I put some corn down to help the deer find the Trophy Rock in front of the cameras. A friend of mine has placed 2- 25 gallon drums of water by his Trophy Rock and they have been producing a lot of pictures for him in this dry Kansas heat. Unfortunately we lost one of our farms to hunt this summer but there are still 6 for us to hunt.

Kansas had a ton of rain this spring to feed the weeds and then July came with no heat and temperatures over 100 for the majority of the month. I have never seen our creeks dried up before (except for the deeper pools) on our farms. We missed our 3 weeks straight of 100 degree days while we were in Wisconsin (pictures to come). It was 75 up there and hard to come back to the miserable heat. The fields look bad down south for corn but the soybeans seem to be doing okay. They are just a little shorter than usual. The local seed distributors here tell me that a lot of farmers are already starting to combine corn fields (for silage) because the are all dried out. When I checked our corn at the farm last week (to put out cameras) I found them in pretty good shape. Here is what our food plots look like:

Field #1- Corn looks good, except on the west side of the plot. The corn didn't grow well on that side and the weeds choked it out a bit. We are going to plant an annual there this month (probably Biologic Maximum). The coons are hitting this corn pretty hard. Any suggestions to get rid of them? We have traps but we aren't down there enough this time of year. The existing clover that is on the north side of this field looks dormant. We will have to fertilize it and try to get it to come back as the weather cools and we get some rain.

Field #2- This spring we broadcast 2.5 acres of soybeans and planted the rest in corn seed from last year. The corn didn't make it and the weeds choked out the soybeans so we are going to leave the weeds/corn on the perimeter of the field and plant whitetail clover and Maximum in the middle 2.5 acres of it.

Field #3- Deer ate the clover down making room for the current weed patch. I have talked with 2 separate experts from the Whitetail Institute and Mossy Oak Biologic and I am going to have to except the fact that a perinial just won't make it in this field. From now on we will only plant annual plots on field #3. With the current PH, we will be planting Maximum.

Field #4- Corn looks great in the field (except for the far west corner. So we are going to replant the west corner with Wintergreens (Whitetail Institute).

Well, considering our drought this summer I am pleased that most of our corn made it. Actually I saw a corn field a few miles away that had an irrigation system for it and it still looked no better than ours. Unfortunately we have to plant almost half of our 13 acres of food plots thanks to the Kansas weather/summer. Farmers tell me they sprayed their fields 2-3 times this year and still couldn't kill all the weeds. We should have the fields planted by the end of the month with the new annual plots. After that I will start checking the cameras. I am excited about this fall because we should have an abundance of late season food for the deer. Most of the crops should come off early around us pulling the deer in. The Wintergreens and Maximum are late season plots that we chose because we already have clover. We wanted something to hold deer in addition to the corn for late season. It should be good during the rut also.

It is going to take some work and money this month but we could still salvage our fields and make them deer magnets. It will be up to God and the weather.