Gleaton Chip Ranch Updates

[bgleaton]

Trail Cam Pics

Here are some recent trail cam pictures. It's been really dry out there and the deer are hammering the protein. We have been out of cottonseed since May and have been feeding protein pellets only. The deer are going through 5,500lbs every 20-25 days or so. We are hoping we can get some rain this weekend to provide some more forage for the animals. We will be doing our trail cam surveys in the next month or so and turn all the information into our TPWD biologist to get our MLD tags. This year we decided to change from the harvest option to the conservation option. We need to hammer the deer herd again this year to reduce the herd numbers. I'm thinking we will need to remove around 25 total deer this year (16 doe and 9 bucks) but should know more after the surveys.

[bgleaton]

My parents are at the ranch and found out we got 0.45in last week and we’ve gotten 2.6in as of 4pm today with more in the forecast. As you can see from the picture above, there was a lot of runoff. I’m hoping this will help fill the ponds.

The good news is Brady Feed came out and filled all protein feeders about 1hr before it started raining today so we got another 5,000lbs set out. Hopefully this rain will reduce a little consumption but we’ll see.


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[bgleaton]

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[Mr. Stickers]

if you need someone to help out keeping that turkey population in check, I'd be more then happy to help you out.... trade ya some $$$ for some turkey birds

[bgleaton]

if you need someone to help out keeping that turkey population in check, I'd be more then happy to help you out.... trade ya some $$$ for some turkey birds

Haha…I’ll keep that in mind. We see tons of birds every fall and then they scatter in the spring. We are hoping by removing cedars around oaks we will continue to increase our number of roost sites Across the property. We are hoping to do a control burn on 1/3 of the property this coming March to improve the habitat for Turkey, quail, and deer.

[bgleaton]

It turns out we got another 0.9in of rain this week so the “new” pond is full. Our larger pond still needs probably a 2in rainfall to fill it all the way up but we are looking really good for the month of July.


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[bgleaton]

My dad was out there yesterday and said that 2 of our 4 large protein feeders were empty and the other 2 were around 25% and they won't be out there until Friday to fill up all of our protein feeders. They are going through around 5,500lbs of protein in 22 days. They are hammering the protein right now even with how green it is.

[bgleaton]

Update

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. We have been looking for a no-till drill for this year that's around $5,000 or less but they are few and far between. FarmLogs shows we got around 1.5-inches last week and they are forecasting more rain today. We have been blessed with a very mild summer thus far, hopefully it continues. We have fed around 26,420lbs of protein so far this year and will be filling the corn feeders soon. Here are some of the bucks we are seeing:







The picture above is one of the 10 bucks we will be removing this year.


The picture above is another one of the 10 bucks we will be removing this year.





We will be doing our deer survey next week. As it stands now, we are estimating that we will need to remove around 25-28 deer (10 bucks & 15 doe). We will not be shooting any "trophies" this year. We will find the worse looking bucks in their age classes from 1.5yrs up to 7.5yrs old. We typically don't like to shoot any bucks younger than 4.5yrs old but right now our goal is to remove mouths from the property and get our deer herd around 1 deer/7 acres.

[Puncher51]

Great looking bucks and great idea on taking out as many mouths as possible. I imagine your fawn crop is very high this year. I can’t imagine the excitement y’all have for the season and future!

[bgleaton]

Great looking bucks and great idea on taking out as many mouths as possible. I imagine your fawn crop is very high this year. I can’t imagine the excitement y’all have for the season and future!

We haven't seen one fawn on any of our trail cameras but that doesn't mean very much this time of year as all of our trail cameras are inside the feed pens even though all the gates to the feed pens are open. I will probably move some cameras to corn feeders where there aren't any feed pens and around water sources to see if we can start seeing some fawns to get an idea on the fawn crop. I'm sure it will be high because we got 4.5-inches of rain in July and have received almost 2-inches the last 7 days. We are very excited about getting a no-till drill for our food plots! We are hoping the no-till drill will eliminate the need for disking our soil and reduce the amount of time on the tractor which means more time for clearing cedars, hunting, etc.

[Droptine3030]

Man I enjoy seeing the progress of your deer, better looking every year. I will keep a lookout for a no -till drill for you.

[hoythunter02]

Looking good man, I enjoy seeing your updates as well, especially an ongoing thread that logs the progress from overgrazed/unknown deer herd, to where you guys have grown the place presently.

Going to be a fun season for you and your family.

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[SV72]

Definitely enjoy your thread. I have been hunting Menard for 30 years or so and I love it. You guys are doing it right and it shows. Beautiful place. Good luck this year on carrying out your plan.

[bgleaton]

Tree Update-8-26-2021

I went out there yesterday for a quick project and checked on the trees. Every single tree is still alive and doing well...let's hope they continue. The Mexican Plums are through the tubes and I need to put cages around them and the oak trees have all grown almost 10 to 12-inches over the past 8-months.

The yellow line shows the original height for most of the trees and the red line shows where some are.













Below is a picture of some silver bluestem that was included in a native seed mix that we broadcasted out in the Spring of 2019 after we had some dozing work done. We are starting to see a lot of the native grasses doing really well since we are not grazing cattle this year.


We are hoping that all of the oak trees will be shooting through the tubes by next Summer. I still need to find time to go out there and add more mulch around the trees and add a 4ft diameter fence around them to prevent deer from browsing.

[bgleaton]

Update

It looks like we got an inch of rain early in the week and FarmLogs is showing we got another 2.6in yesterday so we will see how much we actually got when we get out there. I'm going to buy all of our fall food plot seed from Turner Seed next week and we hope to get it all planted over the next two weeks or so. Now it's time to start shooting and reducing our numbers. Here's a picture of a pretty 5yr old we are hoping continues to grow over the next couple of years: