As I sit here and stew inside, cleaning for my son's party tomorrow, I feel compelled to share the story of how it all fell apart.
As all stories go, let's start from the beginning. The farm is an 150 acre working, cut-your-own Christmas tree farm, which presents a set of challenges as it lies. Such as a huge influx of people and pressure right after Thanksgiving, making gun season or even hunting a moot point. Most of the farm is obviously planted in Christmas trees with about 30 acres or so of huntable woods. Plus 20 acres next door we own, which was basically an over grown thicket we treat as a sanctuary. We have about 3 acres in various food plots, plant mast trees every year (apples, pears, oaks, chestnuts). There is the general idea. And now....for the downfall.
This year started with challenges in putting the plots in, but we overcame the issues. Our main issue has been First Energy was going to replace all the poles and lines which split out property in two and more importantly, run through a major bedding area on the neighboring property, a non hunted 300+ acres owned by MTD. So we knew that could be an issue, but we're assured "they would be done completely by October. Hahhahahha. Cute.
We're not going into the fact that we've lost 3 properties that we used to hunt last year.
We also found the neighbor to the east, erected a tower blind, awful close to the border and our corn field. On their property but, too close for out liking. I hate to make assumptions about people but, you could tell, these were people we were going to have issues with. So more human pressure.
Fast forward to deer season. First Energy isn't done. They have spent the last three weeks breaking up the wooden roads with an excavator and jamming them into large Dumpsters for haul away. Every day. 7am- 5pm. Making a shit ton of noise, human disturbance and basically just royally fucking any deer movement towards our farm.
Our farm is usually a hot bed during the rut. Buck and general deer movement between the bedding on east side and that west side bedding. Well, we haven't seen a mature doe all season, and even the immature buck movement isn't there. No deer activity let alone Rutting activity. So needless to say, with so much hunting time under my belt this season and very little deer movement, I'm very burnt out and feel like I needed to rant a bit.
I know the rut could bring a monster past me at any point so I'll keep grinding but, with a ticking clock of two weeks, I'm feeling the crunch. Now understand also, I take a hunting season vacation from work, so I've been hunting a lot since mid October, and I'm off til Dec 6 Just wanted to whine a bit. Thats all
As all stories go, let's start from the beginning. The farm is an 150 acre working, cut-your-own Christmas tree farm, which presents a set of challenges as it lies. Such as a huge influx of people and pressure right after Thanksgiving, making gun season or even hunting a moot point. Most of the farm is obviously planted in Christmas trees with about 30 acres or so of huntable woods. Plus 20 acres next door we own, which was basically an over grown thicket we treat as a sanctuary. We have about 3 acres in various food plots, plant mast trees every year (apples, pears, oaks, chestnuts). There is the general idea. And now....for the downfall.
This year started with challenges in putting the plots in, but we overcame the issues. Our main issue has been First Energy was going to replace all the poles and lines which split out property in two and more importantly, run through a major bedding area on the neighboring property, a non hunted 300+ acres owned by MTD. So we knew that could be an issue, but we're assured "they would be done completely by October. Hahhahahha. Cute.
We're not going into the fact that we've lost 3 properties that we used to hunt last year.
We also found the neighbor to the east, erected a tower blind, awful close to the border and our corn field. On their property but, too close for out liking. I hate to make assumptions about people but, you could tell, these were people we were going to have issues with. So more human pressure.
Fast forward to deer season. First Energy isn't done. They have spent the last three weeks breaking up the wooden roads with an excavator and jamming them into large Dumpsters for haul away. Every day. 7am- 5pm. Making a shit ton of noise, human disturbance and basically just royally fucking any deer movement towards our farm.
Our farm is usually a hot bed during the rut. Buck and general deer movement between the bedding on east side and that west side bedding. Well, we haven't seen a mature doe all season, and even the immature buck movement isn't there. No deer activity let alone Rutting activity. So needless to say, with so much hunting time under my belt this season and very little deer movement, I'm very burnt out and feel like I needed to rant a bit.
I know the rut could bring a monster past me at any point so I'll keep grinding but, with a ticking clock of two weeks, I'm feeling the crunch. Now understand also, I take a hunting season vacation from work, so I've been hunting a lot since mid October, and I'm off til Dec 6 Just wanted to whine a bit. Thats all
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