Sitting in the blind watching the fog lift out of the sendero nice cool wind, Enjoying the hardwork I put into our property the 2018 season has officially began for the jnj ranch!!! SEMPER FI
Thanks we bought it 4yrs ago, best investment I ever made surrounded by huge low fence ranches and I'm right in the middle and good thing is I have been able to get to know my neighbors and inform them I'm not the brown it's down type of hunter and strive to take 4.5 or older and we watch each other properties cause we have had problems meth heads stealing in our area!! Hopefully this new year we will be putting in an off grid solar system to power our cabin and well pump when we get that dug!! Little at a time
30acres only also, I use to bow hunt when I was on big lease now I just rifle hunt so I dont have to bother the other landowners to go get a deer that went over property lines from bow hunting!!!
The first year I bought the property I killed a 152 2/8 11pt that was 5.5yrs old and I see quite a few nice bucks during the season but I only shoot one buck a year off our property and sometimes it's just an old spike or cull buck!!!
Nice and cozy in the blind, and thank god for plexi glass windows wind is howling and still raining here at the ranch, I'm hoping when this rain and wind dies down they will get up and eat we shall see!!! Anyone else in this weather
It was raining hard at 5 when I got up this morning and wind was gusting up there, so I hunted from the house this morning. Temps dropped all morning and now it is 51 deg here. I checked my house gauge and it has 1.89" in so far. My food plots will really take off now. The winds and rain have knocked a ton more acorns on the ground and a lot of winter weeds are all over the place. I walked and rattled in several locations yesterday around my place and can see why the deer are not hitting corn or protein right now. The does are scattered around all over the place and going to make for an interesting rut when it starts next week. Seen a couple of bucks that are limping around and have broken tines already.
We need a hard freeze soon for activity to really pick up, do you think the rut will come sooner than later for us this year usually for me it's around the end of dec for the peak of the second rut we shall see. I had zero movement this morning I'll be back in the blind at 230!
Freeze will help some but with all this late rain the winter weeds are going to be a problem also. Winter grass is already up and doing well. Freeze will knock the browse back and other warm season weeds. Acorn will start to slow down some also with this last rain and wind. I rattled in a buck yesterday morning and then saw a buck from the blind late yesterday afternoon. I have only seen two does all week long from a blind. They have no reason to leave the thick cover now and the bucks dog them if they do. Rattling should work well the next week here. The rut looks to be a little earlier here so far. We might get a light frost next week it looks like.
It should be good, yesterday and this morning I saw does back on the corn at feeders which match my acorn samples, the acorn samples are rotting. When they start dropping, I collect samples every five days to a week from a tree at the house. I put them in my cartridge case drier to make sure they are dry and then see how long they take to rot. Since they started dropping, the rot has been coming on strong with the wet weather as my collection span has closed. Today, I'm going to start to bring my feeders up from the second or two they have been idling at for the cold temperatures expected this week.
I saw a heavy horned, 10 pt, 3YO trying to work does at a feeder yesterday morning, they weren't interested so he made scrapes at a couple locations 100 yards out from feeder. He scent checked the feeder again about 1:00 ~ 1:30 about 100-yards downwind. He came back the second time because I operate my feeders at daybreak and noon (I hunt all day). That noon feeding has been fantastic and has helped me eliminate the hog problem as by dark, the deer have cleaned everything up.
Good information , I might try that noon feeding also just got here to the ranch unloaded just waiting for my brother to show up and get to hunting , we have till friday so hopefully we will see better activity plots look amazing !!!
Finally some nice weather should be a good evening back in the blind at 230, movement this morning 1buck with a 3inch droptine I want my nephew to get and 1 doe!!
Hang in there. Kinda' slow in Erath too. My friend has pics of a big bodied buck we've been watching, problem is he's probably 12" wide. Oh well. He came out about 30 minutes ago. Hes a badarse.
Life is too short, as is. Don't chance it. Don't text and drive.
In the blind now no movement yet, anybody else still have deer showing up at night, hoping now with this freeze we've had they will start transitioning to plots and corn!!
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Temps dropped all morning and now it is 51 deg here. I checked my house gauge and it has 1.89" in so far. My food plots will really take off now. The winds and rain have knocked a ton more acorns on the ground and a lot of winter weeds are all over the place. I walked and rattled in several locations yesterday around my place and can see why the deer are not hitting corn or protein right now. The does are scattered around all over the place and going to make for an interesting rut when it starts next week. Seen a couple of bucks that are limping around and have broken tines already.![[Linked Image]](http://neoswarm.com/images/Bug_Crawling.gif)