We Have a Ranch Again - New Ranch - Follow Along

[cehorn]

Here are the food plot pics.

Here are a couple of pics of the deer plots I planted in March that I posted about above. The first 2 pics are from the weekend of 4-5 and the 3rd pick is from last weekend so you can see the growth.




And then these pics are right after planting the other plots

[cehorn]

And here are the other pics from last weekend of Tracker and a snake my buddy caught and helped off the road.

[cehorn]

And 1 last post on the food plots. It was more work than anticipated as it always is but it is done. So my overall totals for this spring (and to date on perennials) are:
2 acres of native sunflowers - not super optimistic as nothing has come up yet and it was planted late
4 acres replant of Texas Wildlife Perennial mix from last year - I think we planted too deep last year so I wanted to get a little more seed out. They are actually looking pretty good right now.
5 acres new plant of Texas Wildlife Perennial mix - so over the past 2 years I have planted 11 acres of perennials to convert a little area from goat/cow pasture to something more deer friendly
6 acres of local feed store food plot - generic mix for all game but over 60% soybeans and peas - the 2 plots I planted early have come up and are looking good as you can see in the pics above
5 acres of Turner Spring Deer - come on rain, lets get this stuff growing.

[DUKFVR]

Thanks for the updates!

[RutnBuk]

Looks good.
Hope your food plots do better than mine ever have. 10 years of planting them and only 1 year (2007) was a successful spring/summer plot. All others didnt make it past June.

[cehorn]

Looks good.
Hope your food plots do better than mine ever have. 10 years of planting them and only 1 year (2007) was a successful spring/summer plot. All others didnt make it past June.

That's about what ours did last year. It was a combination of the rain stopping, temps going up and cows getting hungrier. But if I can provide a little more the next couple of months I think it is worth it.

[cehorn]

Nothing new to add as I didn't go to the ranch this weekend and won't be going next weekend. But we did get 1.5" of rain this weekend so I'm hoping for good updates on the food plots when I make it out there in 2 weeks.

[cehorn]

Time for a monthly update. No real work done except spraying some roads, filling feeders, etc. But we have had a decent amount of rain the past few weeks including finally getting the big one Saturday night. So the ground was fairly saturated and then we got almost 4 inches in a few hours. Water running everywhere and our tanks are now full. I had a couple of buddies out this weekend also and their kids did a lot of fishing at our big tank. Here are some pics.

Here are 2 food plot pics from Saturday before the big rains. These are the same 2 food plots as pics from post 256.


A little fishing. I didn't get a pic of the biggest one but it weighed in over 3 lbs.


And now the rain pics. As I mentioned water flowing everywhere. This is the first time we have actually had water flowing in our creek since we bought the place. There is a spring at this location that hasn't flowed in over a year but there was a little bit of water on the left side of the pic Saturday. Sunday morning the whole thing was under water.

This creek flows into a tank we call New Tank. Last year I posted pics of the tanks (post 220). New Tank was even lower than the pic in post 220 Saturday afternoon. Here it is Sunday morning and it was still filling from the creek above. I have no doubt an hour or so after these pictures it was full and running over. Notice the rocks from post 220 are now under water. If the water level stays high we may put some fish in this one. I'm a little skeptical on how high it will stay as I think a lot of water seeps into the ground in this area. But we will likely give it a shot.

Here are pics of the Red Tank. It still had a couple of feet left to get to full but this is the fullest it has been since we dug it out and expanded it. You can see the berm is completely under water. With it now full we will likely try to get some catfish in there to add to the fishing.


Here is a different creek crossing that we have to go thru to get to the other side of our property. We have never seen water in this crossing at all.

And here is the Big Tank. This is the tank we fished on Saturday (pics above). The overflow is about where the kids waist is in the pic above. This tank filled up and had a ton of water overflowing. In the pic in post 220, you can see the white on the tree where the water has gotten before. That tree looked the same Saturday and Sunday morning all of the white on the tree was under water. A spring feeds this tank that hasn't been running in about a year. I hope this amount of water not only filled up the tanks but filled up everything below ground to keep the springs going.



Here is the overflow water flowing out of the tank

And finally, this overflow goes back into a little water hole in the creek and then goes underground for a ways. Here is the flow going into that water hole.


Hopefully there are more rain storms like this in the future but this is by far the biggest storm and most water we have seen on the place in the almost 3 years we have had it. It is a good feeling to have full tanks, etc. Between the tanks, the food plots and protein if our deer aren't as healthy as a deer can possibly be I don't know what else to do....

[miket]

Looking good, glad to see you getting serious moisture!