Pat's Outdoor Adventures: 2013 - 2014 Deer Season Part 1

Deer season, for me, did not start at the beginning of October with the opening of bow season. Instead, it started on a brisk Saturday morning, February 16th, when I met my dad at the cabin to get started on preparations for the next hunting season. The disappointment left over from the 2012 season was being replaced with excitement around plans for the next year. Over the course of the next 7 months, I would spend many days at the cabin working from dawn until dusk on various land and wildlife management projects. From moving tree stands, clearing out access paths and cutting ATV trails through the timber to planting apple trees and food plots for the deer. Everything that I worked on was for 1 goal, to make the next hunting season better then the last.

I spent a couple of trips in February and March working with my mom and dad to clear out access paths to our tree stands as well as to locate new tree stand locations. My property is split east and west by a very deep ravine that has a wet season creek at the bottom.So to make accessing tree stands throughout the property easier, we fired up the chainsaw and cleared out that ravine allowing us to sneak around the property during hunting season without alerting all of the deer. We also began work on clearing out brush along the fields in preparation for food plots.

Dad and I working to clear out overhanging limbs along the big field

When we bought the property, there was already a small fruit orchard out in front of the cabin that had about 20 trees in it. It appeared that the previous owner had not dedicated time to pruning and maintaining the trees after they were planted, so I set to work on providing the trees with a little tlc. I pruned, fertilized, mulched, and re-caged the existing trees.

The existing apple/pear orchard all cleaned up

The fruit trees ended up producing a good amount of mast early, but the summer drought ended up doing them in later.

Pears

Apples

I also ordered a dozen new apple and pear trees from the Arbor Day Foundation and dad drove around flood waters to come down and help me plant them.

Dad driving in a stake to cage the new fruit trees

Oh yeah...and it had been so wet throughout May that I manged to get my truck stuck and dad had to pull me out.

Oops!

The rest of the spring and early summer was spent, with the help of my dad and brother-in-law Mike, preparing and planting my very first food plot (along with several other smaller projects). I decided to divide up a 2 acre portion of the large field into 4 quadrants. The SW would be planted to clover in the spring, the SE would be planted to turnips and radishes, the NE would be planted into a mix of winter peas and forage brassicas, and the NW would be planted to more clover in late summer. Also, on the North end of the field, I decided to plant some Egyptian Wheat to screen the cabin from the rest of the big field.

1/2 ton of lime for the food plots

Mike spraying gly to prepare for food plot planting

Me planting my very first food plot

Dad finishing up planting the forage brassicas and winter peas

Luckily, the first half of the year provided plenty of moisture so the clover planted in the spring and the turnips/radishes planted in late July grew very well. Sadly, the late summer and early fall were so dry, that the brassica/pea mixture and the fall planted clover did not fair so well.

The Egyptian Wheat plot screen grew over 10 feet tall
(the cabin is back there somewhere)

The spring planted clover food plot turned out very well

The turnip/radish plot came in well, even with very little rain

A purple top turnip larger then a softball!

Although not a project, I was bound and determined to learn more about deer movement through our property this year. Starting with the initial trip in February, I ran 3 trail cameras different places throughout the year to figure out where and when the deer moved through the property. This was probably my favorite part of the off season, every time I went out to pull the SD cards from the cameras, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. I spent hours looking through and studying the nearly 20,000 pictures that were taken and learned a lot in the process. A few of my favorite pictures are below:

3 does (My favorite picture of the year)

Fawns were a rare sight last year, but a common one this year

2 young bucks fighting

View of the food plot the evening before shotgun season opened

Using trail cameras boosted my confidence as I was able to see that there were far more deer moving through my property then I thought. It also showed me the number and quality of the bucks that were around. Over the course of the year, I picked up over 30 different bucks on trail camera. Of course most of those deer would only be travelling through occasionally, but it was still really cool to see. More importantly then just picking up deer on trail camera, I was able to see how valuable the food plots were this year. It was very rewarding after putting in so much time and energy to see them pulling in the deer from all directions.

13 deer feeding in the food plot at one time

Of course there were several other smaller projects that we accomplished this year as well. My brother-in-law, Mike, and I nearly drove ourselves to exhaustion clearing out an ATV/Walking trail loop on the East side of the deep ravine. Oh, and there was mowing, mowing, and more mowing. With such a wet spring the grass grew like crazy.

Mowing at the cabin on Father's Day

You may remember that Labor Day weekend last September was extremely hot and humid. Well, dad and I still had to get 5 tree stands put up, shooting lanes cleared, and paths into and out of those tree stands cut. We started out early, but it was already north of 80 degrees out and by the time we finished the last stand, it was over 90. I made the mistake of pushing myself too hard and had to sit down in the bottom of the deep ravine on our way back from putting up the last stand. In the end though, I was very pleased with everywhere that we decided to set stands.

Tree stands loaded up and ready to go

Last tree stand put up (the one that nearly killed me)

Erin testing out the ridge tree stand

I have to admit, my favorite part of this season had nothing to do with deer or deer hunting at all. Instead, it was the people that I got to spend time with that made the year such a great one.

Mom and Dad walking back to the cabin
after a long days work

Mike firing up the ATV to spread some lime

Erin and Abigail "riding" the ATV

Abigail helping daddy spread clover seed

Dad resting after planting new fruit trees

Erin shooting her new bow

Abigail posing with Grandma and Grandpa O'Connell

Abigail posing with mommy and daddy before going down the slide

Cousins eating lunch on Labor Day

Cousins posing with Grandma and Grandpa O'Connell

There is no way that I could finish off my part 1 overview without mentioning my best friend who was by my side throughout the entire year. He loved every minute of it!