In the mean time, you can see some of 2015's preseason pictures here...
http://3ffarms.weebly.com/2015-trail-cam.html
Better late than never I suppose. Finally took the time to add 2015 trail cam pics to the photo page. I hope to get some cameras out for the 2016 preseason soon.
In the mean time, you can see some of 2015's preseason pictures here... http://3ffarms.weebly.com/2015-trail-cam.html
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I had to chuckle as I looked back through old post and saw that this year mirrored last year with the lack of posts. As a matter of fact, tomorrow would have been 1 year to the date of my first summer update from last year. Feb, March, April, May and June have always been our busy months due to baseball. We began practicing in early February and are still going strong with All-Stars as I type. The boys had a great year and finished 14-0 during the regular season and were rewarded with the #1 seed in our area tournament that consisted of 28 teams. Unfortunately the ride ended in the semi-finals as we were outplayed by a really good team from Calera. It was a great season and one that we will not soon forget. I was fortunate to be selected as head coach of the 7U All-Star team, so we are wide open with that right now as I chose to coach Hayes' All-Star team this year after coaching Grayson's last year. Amongst it all, we have tried to mix in a little fishing, Laura and I managed to slip away for a quick trip to Gatlinburg one weekend, and we went to visit family and had a great day at the lake over Memorial Day weekend. The farm has been very quiet this year as the high water kept us away from late January through mid-May. Dad has only made one day trip up but I expect him to start getting some tractor time in this month in preparation for the upcoming season. Aside from that, the business continues to grow in it's infancy stage and that is all attributable to the Lord placing His hand on us and blessing us richly. He continues to teach us lessons that would have never been learned had we not gone through this journey over the past 20 months. A few pictures of our Spring are below.
We decided to spend New Years at the camp this year so we loaded up and headed that way Wednesday night. This was to be a freezer filling trip as we haven't been in the woods since Thanksgiving. The boys and I slept in Thursday morning but got moving around 10 or so and decided to get some decoys out in a food plot since the river was creeping in on us by the hour. My wife took this shot just as I began tossing the dekes. That's our normal duck hole behind me, but you can see the green of the food plot where she is. By the time we left this morning, all of this was under water. Nothing special, just thought it was a great picture. The boys and I made our way in to the stand around 3 on Thursday afternoon and began seeing deer around 4. We were watching 4 does when this guy stepped out and began pushing them around. It didn't take much convincing from Grayson for me to give him the green light on shooting this buck. At 4:50 he gave us a good broadside shot at 100 yards and Grayson put it in the 10 ring. The buck jumped up and went down on his front end immediately, pushing his way about 30 yards before piling up. As we were packing all of our gear up, 3 big does came out and little brother wanted to shoot. I figured if we were taking one to the processor, we might as well take two. Unfortunately, little brother pulled his shot and missed. The deer he shot at bounded off and stopped just inside the woods but didn't offer another shot. Of course, once back at camp everyone, including little sister, had to get involved with the picture taking of Grayson's buck. The next morning (Friday) dawned cold and breezy. The boys enjoy duck hunting since I let them paint their faces. It's the little things, right? Not much was happening as the high water had the birds scattered. One fish eater (merganser) that buzzed the decoys was all we could muster. Should have had a couple more but that's the way it goes sometimes. We split up for the evening hunt and Grayson went with dad and I took Hayes with me. One quick caveat...when I looked back at the footage of Hayes shooting at the doe on Thursday afternoon (the one he missed) I actually saw a pile of white hair fly off the tail of a DIFFERENT deer that was standing beside it! We made a quick search of the area and found a partially blown off tail. We gave Hayes a pretty hard time about shooting the wrong deer...in the butt...the rest of the weekend. Just as I was snapping the picture of Hayes holding the tail, I got this picture from Laura of a couple of bucks that had eased out back at camp. She said we should just sit with her since deer hunting is so easy. :) We were on doe patrol again for Friday afternoon. It was a comedy of errors kind of day for Hayes and I. We literally took the safety off on 4 different does but everything from small bucks chasing them off as he was getting ready to pull the trigger, to my phone battery dying and miraculously coming back on and then falling off the shelf at the very moment he was getting ready to shoot again, (which makes an incredibly loud thud when your not expecting it and a deer is 70 yards away) to him not being able to find a doe in the middle of a wide open 1.5 acre field...you name it...it happened. We were finally able to get a shot at a big doe right at dark. He promptly missed her and she ran 50 yards and started feeding again. Talk about insult to injury. I elected not to let him shoot again as it was getting pretty late and his confidence was at 0. We heard big brother shoot right after us and it sounded like a hit. We packed up our gear and started out of the stand when he shot a second time. Turns out he missed the first shot, the deer ran in the woods and snorted three times only to return and walk towards the stand. Praise God for dumb deer. A nice 100lb doe was Grayson's reward giving him his second deer in two days. I spent all night consoling Hayes about the ups and downs of deer hunting. Replaying many of the misses I'd had in my hunting career. We went through what we thought might be the problem and I tried to build him back up. We had practiced both days with a scoped 22 and he was shooting lights out with it. I knew he could shoot but he was just way too jittery (buck fever) when it was time to shoot at a live animal. Fast forward to this morning and it was just he and I at it again. We had deer around us from daylight but never could get the shot we wanted. About 7:15, a single doe broke off from a group and fed toward us. She got to about 75 yards and Hayes got all lined up. Just as I was telling him "take" as in "take your time"...BOOM! He back flipped her right where she stood! I was so proud of the way he fought through the misses and buck fever and was able to redeem himself on the last hunt of the weekend. He was as proud of this doe as a B&C buck! A few pictures of Hayes with his doe taken one year to the day as his first deer ever. He claims January 2nd is his lucky day! 6 year olds aren't much help on loading a deer. Despite the mid 30's temperature, I was sweating and out of breath when I took this pic after bear hugging the deer and basically rolling it onto the tailgate. Hayes was all smiles and didn't even get his hands dirty. :) Once again, a wonderful weekend spent enjoying God's blessings and bounty. Got a freezer full of meat and made more memories than you can shake a stick at!
Not to sound like a broken record, but the youth weekend is my absolute favorite of the year. My boys hunt with me 99% of the time, but I feel like the whole weekend revolves around them with the title "Youth Hunt." Also, pressure is down so the deer are normally a little more active and it gives them first crack at unpressured deer for the most part. We allowed them to play hooky on Friday from school so we got an early start Friday morning. Unfortunately my oldest wasn't feeling well, so it just me and my 6 year old. He was up and at them with plenty of excitement. We had a good hunt and saw 7, including one pretty, but young, 6 point. This was the first sit in this location so I was anxious to see what it held so we did not shoot.
We came back to camp and had a good breakfast. Laura (my wife) had asked if we could try to take the kids to get Christmas Card pictures somewhere with a nice backdrop. I obliged so we loaded up and headed to do so. The first stop found a beautiful backdrop and as we headed over Hayes got within a couple feet of this nasty moccasin. My 2 year old daughter was right behind him. Guys, I let my guard down thinking the snakes would not be out with the temps. The good Lord was watching over us and protected my little ones despite my neglect. Of course I had nothing with me to kill him with so we backed away and took a couple of photos. We saw yet another moccasin at our next stop but we finally got the Christmas card photos we needed. That afternoon the boys and I set up on a 4 way where I had several good buck pictures. At 4:50 while watching a couple more deer, a really nice, mature buck stepped out and made a scrape at 180 yards. There was a 6 point feeding between him and us at about 100 yards and I felt confident he would come join him or push him off. Unfortunately he did neither and went right back into the WRP. We set up the direction he was headed as we knew he would likely cross another lane, which he did, but he crossed at 200 yards and there was no shot opportunity. We had a great hunt and planned to be back in the same stand Saturday morning. We snuck in early on Saturday with high anticipation of seeing the buck again. Right at daylight 7 hogs showed up at 80 yards. We decided to burn some powder. :D Two shots later and we had some bacon. We saw a half dozen deer and spent the next couple of hours just being silly and enjoying our time in the stand. These two fight like brothers non-stop but they truly love each other more than anything. After showing off the hogs to everyone back at camp, we had a big pancake/sausage breakfast. With yesterday's snake encounters still fresh on everyone's mind, we decided we'd go snake hunting after breakfast. So I loaded the family up and off we went. This time I was sure we had plenty of firepower. Our first snake was nowhere to be found, but we were fortunate to find moccasin number 2 still in the same area. Hayes took great pride in getting a little sweet revenge. That afternoon we decided to split up. A new buck had shown up Saturday morning just before daylight at another stand, so Grayson went with his Pop-Pop there and I took Hayes and Laura with me. The buck we were hoping to get Grayson on is below in the black/white photo. Laura, Hayes and myself headed back to the same sit as the previous two still hoping to catch a glimpse of the buck that gave us the slip on Friday afternoon. We snapped this quick group shot before taking off. Unfortunately neither buck showed up but we saw plenty of deer and another hog that had to be 300lbs+. He crossed too far and too quickly for Hayes to get a shot. Laura snapped this picture of a lone doe feeding before sunset. We all slept well after a big dinner and two hard days of hunting. We had one more hunt on Sunday before heading home and I was going to let them shoot pretty much whatever they wanted. I guess the deer read the script because we saw not hide, nor hair. We did get to witness one of the most beautiful sunrises I've seen in a while. God painted a pretty one for us Sunday morning. We called it a wrap pretty early as we had the 5 hour drive back home. Packed up, hugged mom and dad and thanked them for a great weekend packed with memories. Closed the chapter on another year of the youth hunt and soaked up every moment we could. As we drove off I thanked the Lord for his blessings, protection and allowing us to enjoy all that He has created. Well if you are looking for a pile of doves that rivals Argentina, you won't find it in this post. With that said, I don't believe we could have squeezed one more smile or laugh out of a weekend. The birds just have not been, and still aren't, anywhere in the South Delta with any consistency. Made a couple of hunts and scratched out a few, but spent the weekend with one of the best friends a man could ask for and wonderful family. Ate well, watched some good football, played in the dirt and killed a few birds. All in all, a pretty good weekend. Changing gears to whitetail, we did get two cameras out and did quite a bit of trimming. Looking forward to seeing what we've got roaming around this year. This is year 5 of heavy management by us and the neighbors. Hoping for a good crop of bucks to be on and around the property. It's hard to believe another off season has passed and we are only days away from the start of the 2015-2016 hunting season. We're looking forward to hosting some friends for the weekend and spending time fellowshipping, cooking, watching football and shooting a few birds. Dad has been working on the dove field for several weeks and I look forward to the first shots fired of the year that signal the arrival of another fall in the Mississippi Delta. A few pictures of the field prep and also a couple of photos from the past couple of years.
How in the world have 4+ months slipped past since my last post? I just feel like there aren't enough hours in the day for so much of what I need to do. After my last post in January, we jumped right into baseball and are still going strong even as I type this post. We've had a lot of other happenings during the Spring, but it seems baseball has dominated our thoughts, afternoons and weekends. I'm thankful to have two boys that LOVE to play but we are all excited about wrapping the season up and catching a quick break prior to football starting in August. I will brag (allow me to, please) on Grayson and Hayes. Grayson finished 3rd in the league with an .837 batting average and Hayes was the only 6 year old playing in the Rookie 7/8 year old league. Hayes had two game clinching hits for our team this season and I'm excited to continue watching him develop into a fine little ball player as well. The farm has been pretty quiet over the last 4 months as we had a lot of water this year. There's not a lot to be done when most of the place is under 2-3 feet of water. We have begun drying out a bit and dad sprayed the dove field in preparation of getting some seed planted next weekend. Aside from that, we continue to see God's hand at work in the new business, and all throughout our lives. What a difference a year makes! Even though this is not where we thought we would be this time last year, God proves His sovereignty daily, assuring us His hand is in this and is guiding us. It's impossible to look back over the past 12 months and NOT see how He has orchestrated all of this. Many lessons have been learned, some more difficult than others, but through it all, He has drawn us closer as a family and into obedience of His will, not ours. A few pictures from the past few months are below. You can see where most of our efforts have been placed. :)
After two years of tagging along with his big brother, we decided it was time for Hayes, our five year old, to be the shooter. He has shown great steadiness and accuracy in many sessions of .22 practice off the bench. After big brother got a buck over Thanksgiving, it was time for Hayes to get in the driver's seat as we entered the Christmas holidays. Dad had seen a good 8 point hanging behind the camp on 4 different occasions, so we set up on him last weekend. That proved unsuccessful as we never saw him. We were able to make it back over on Thursday morning and had a good hunt that afternoon. We saw 15 deer or so and right at dark had a sounder of 12 hogs enter the field. Hayes squeezed off a round, however he missed low on the biggest of the bunch, but it was good for him to get a little experience shooting at a live target. Fast forward to Friday afternoon and we were set up in the same stand, along with about 2 acres of standing water from the non-stop rain over the past 24 hours. I was somewhat skeptical of our chances with much of the field underwater. About 4:50 big brother and I were watching a couple of does to the west when Hayes says,"there's a deer." I looked to the north and saw that a buck had eased out at exactly 100 yards. A quick check with the binos to verify he was a shooter and I began to work Hayes into position to get the shot. This includes spinning chairs around, positioning him on his knees so he is tall enough to see through the scope out of the window. He got settled, took two deep breaths, and squeezed the trigger. The sharp crack of the 7/08 rang out and I saw the buck mule kick and take off to the edge of the field. He exited the field into a tall stand of grass at which point I see him tangle himself and fall over backwards, heart shot. We celebrated with plenty of hugs and high fives, made a few calls, sent a few texts, and then went to put our hands on his trophy. What an incredible experience to have little brother shoot his buck, nearly 2 years to the date, within 10 yards of where His big brother shot his first buck. Both bucks even fell in the same stand of tall grass! I thank the Good Lord for blessing me with the opportunity to be with both of my boys experiencing His great outdoors and providing us with safety and wonderful memories all along the way! It beats me shooting a world class deer all day, every day! Thanksgiving Weekend
The boys, Presley, Laura and myself left Birmingham at 9:30 the morning of the 25th. We would be the only ones at the camp for a couple of days, as mom and dad had flown to Charlotte to see Ryan and Brigette. The temperature was cool and skies were overcast as we made our way into the Delta around 2:00 that afternoon. As we pulled into the gate at the homesite, a nice 6 point was carelessly feeding in Ni-Ni’s plot a mere 200 yards away. He paid us little attention as we unloaded our gear, groceries and 3 kids. The boys and I got dressed and headed to the Tractor Shed field, leaving the ladies at the camp to stay warm and get dinner going. We ran deer off of the Landing Strip, the Owl Field and the Tractor Shed field as we made our way in. It was obvious the deer were moving early that particular afternoon. We sat until dark and saw 8, but only one small buck. We spent the night enjoying the country life that the farm offers. It’s such a contrast to the neighborhood scene we spend each day in, but very much the life that both Laura and myself grew up enjoying. Laura and I spent several minutes outside just in awe of the stars, the sounds and the beauty of being away from the city lights. It was a cold, crisp, 29 degrees that evening and we saw several deer grazing behind the camp that evening. The next morning I woke to cold, clear skies but I just couldn’t make myself get the boys up and going very early. I went back to bed and we all got moving around 8. We made a quick trek into the 3 way, but the only movement we saw was a big raccoon. We eased back to the camp around 10 and had a nice breakfast and just enjoyed the solitude of being there. There is a cleansing to the spirit that comes at the farm…almost indescribable. We packed up and departed around 3 that afternoon and headed to Natchez to be with family through Friday morning. I beat the alarm on my phone that I had set for 3:00 Friday morning by 10 minutes. I quickly dressed, made some coffee and roused the boys. We were all excited to head back to the farm for the next couple of days. We made the 2 hour trip uneventfully and pulled into the camp at 5:30 and began gearing up for a morning duck hunt. There were a lot of birds, but once again, we are subject to little water with the dry fall we’ve had and only managed a couple of wood ducks. It was still a beautiful sunrise with a clear, cold, 28 degree morning. The boys decided they wanted to go sit in a deer stand around 8 so we loaded up and headed to the Owl Field. They napped while I watched for the next hour or so. It was very eventful mid-morning sit, as we saw 14 deer by 10:30. They, and I, were ready to head back to the camp to rest a bit and grab some breakfast. Mom and Dad flew back in that morning and joined us around 2. We talked a bit and then all headed to our afternoon stands. The boys and I decided to go to the Rat Hole, as the sign there was unbelievable. We saw 6 deer heading in and began seeing deer within 5 minutes of getting settled. Hayes drifted off to sleep again, leaving Grayson and I to watch the small field. Around 3:25 I looked to the south and saw a big bodied buck and a doe at about 75 yards. I moved Grayson into position and got him settled. He did fantastic at calming himself and taking his time. Finally after about 3 minutes (it felt like an hour) the buck turned broadside to us. I told Grayson to gently ease back on the trigger and the sharp crack of the rifle broke the calmness of the crisp afternoon. I heard the bullet hit and the buck reared back on his hind legs and took off, keeping his shoulder tucked into his body. I knew Grayson had made a great shot, although I lost the buck as he made his way through the thick WRP. Grayson was tickled to death and couldn’t quit laughing and I was shaking like a leaf. Little brother slept through the entire episode, and only when we woke him a half hour later did he even realize what had happened. We made our way down to where the buck was standing when Grayson shot and I saw him laying only 30 yards away. I didn’t mention it to the boys as I wanted to let them track him themselves. It only took a moment or two before Hayes saw him and both of them took off in a sprint towards the downed buck. High fives and hugs were abundant as we admired the deer. Grayson had made a perfect shoulder shot and we had a quick, clean kill. I said a prayer of thanks to The Lord for providing us with such a wonderful blessing. The buck was a heavy 3 year old. He pushed the scales down to 190 when we hung him that evening. Grayson has been beside himself since he got another buck and he is becoming quite the little hunter in his young age. Of course, Hayes is now ready to challenge big brother and will be the trigger man as we anticipate making our way back to the farm for the holidays. He has not killed a deer before, or even shot at one, so it should be interesting to say the least! God bless and I hope you and your family had a Happy Thanksgiving. |
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