Gleaton Chip Ranch Updates

[bgleaton]

I have two bunches of gobblers hanging around
But zero hens. First spring with this property so hope we see some nesting.
I removed 125 varmints in the past 13 months.

We are seeing about 25 hens and 10 gobblers going to and from the feeders currently. We are hoping that the felled cedars and not grazing for over a year will help the birds with nesting.

Great job on the varmints! We set out traps for raccoons every time we are out there along with snares on the fence lines. Every little bit helps!

[bgleaton]

Rain

Our weather station shows we received 0.35in of rain this morning.

This puts us at 0.73in for the month of January. We are hoping February and March brings more rain.

It looks like we may get another 0.5-0.75in on Wednesday and possibly some snow and ice on Thursday.

[bgleaton]

2/2/2022 Update

I wanted to show a picture of the cottonseed consumption we are seeing right now. Please note that we filled this cottonseed feeder up on 1/16/2022 so they've gone through half of it in just over 2 weeks which is about normal for this time of year. We added more cottonseed feeders this year putting us at 8 total cottonseed feeders. We are hoping that this will ensure that every deer has a chance to get either cottonseed and/or protein and prevent an older deer from dominating a feeder and not allowing the younger bucks, doe, and fawns from feeding.

Please don't focus on the poor picture quality as I'm well aware that I need to replace this camera.


Does this look like a double bearded gobbler?

I really hope we can get some rain out there today. We will be doing one more hunt on the last weekend of the MLD season to try to remove 2 more deer. I'm hoping to be able to do a 5-acre prescribed burn in one of our fields as long as the soil moisture and all other conditions are right for it.

[MAP]

^^^ looks like a double beard and the other one has 5 beards......not a turkey expert, but the head looks like a hen

[MooseontheLoose]

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Does this look like a double bearded gobbler?

It could be. My experience with hill country birds on the places I've hunted though, is that their beards do some funky things in the late winter/early spring time. Not sure if its related to the cold/wet weather or what, but they seem to get all scraggly looking and look like they have a few beards.

Hunted several properties with lots of birds on camera across different years that looked very similar to your pics in the winter. I thought for sure we had several multiple bearded birds running around. I killed a lot of them through the years in spring season and they were all just normal beards.

A lot of the multi beards I've seen are hard to tell from trail cam pics. The beard looks normal, just extra thick and you can't tell it's a multiple bearded bird until you get your hands on it and separate the beards out. Sometimes though, you can get a close enough pic at the right angle to see the other beards.

Good luck getting that one. Hope he's got a couple and you can get him killed

[bgleaton]

Here’s a picture from this morning. At 8:30pm last night our weather station was showing 0.30in of rain and then it started freezing. If I had to guess we probably got .3in of rain, 0.5in of ice, and an inch of snow. We’ll take what we can get!


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[Big pig]

1” of rain in eastern brown county.
First runoff rain in months.
Then lots of sleet and snow.

High today of 23 ish.

[cehorn]

1” of rain in eastern brown county.
First runoff rain in months.
Then lots of sleet and snow.

High today of 23 ish.

That is good news. Hopefully we got the same a little north of you. Our tanks need it!

[SV72]

Here’s a picture from this morning. At 8:30pm last night our weather station was showing 0.30in of rain and then it started freezing. If I had to guess we probably got .3in of rain, 0.5in of ice, and an inch of snow. We’ll take what we can get!


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Thanks for the report. We hunt in NW Menard county and I hope we got the same. When do the antlers start dropping at your place typically?

[bgleaton]

Thanks for the report. We hunt in NW Menard county and I hope we got the same. When do the antlers start dropping at your place typically?

We normally see antlers start dropping in March. We typically start looking for them during April/Spring turkey season.

[SV72]

Thanks. Ours are hit and miss, but I would say March is the best time on our place.

[bgleaton]

The deer are hammering the cottonseed and protein right now! My dad topped off 4 of our cottonseed feeders last weekend and our protein feeders are around 25% full so Brady Feed & Fertilizer is coming out early next week to fill up all of our protein feeders. We are going to do one more hunt for this season and try to shoot 2 more doe and possibly 1 cull buck, if he shows up. Another thing on the hit list is a big boar that we have been seeing for a couple of months. We found the area that he got in, which is a wash-out area in our fence, and it allowed hogs to push the fence inward to get onto our place. As soon as we first saw him we walked the fence line and found this area. We have since fixed it and no other hogs should be able to get through.

I'm hoping to do a control burn on Saturday (2/26) if the weather cooperates. I will keep you all posted on how it goes as my plan is to burn a 10 acre field. I will have a 350-gallon tote, a trash pump, and a 100ft fire hose in the back of my truck as well as UTV sprayer, leaf blowers, and some rakes. My plan is to do a slow backing fire but we will see how it goes. I figured we would start small and show how much better these areas look/produce so my parents get on board.

[TildenHunter]

It is coming along for you guys! Yall have made giant strides in short order. Keep the updates coming.

[bgleaton]

Well, we ended up having dew/slight rain all day yesterday so it was to wet to do a prescribed burn. We were able to burn 4 buck brush piles, fill all the cottonseed feeders, protein feeders, Turkey feeders, etc. and a buddy was able to shoot our last cull buck and doe so our season is complete. I’m hoping to do a prescribed burn in March if the conditions are right. I’ll post some pictures later.


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[bgleaton]

This is our cottonseed trailer. We welded rebar on hinges and then use PVC to keep the tarp from collecting water. Works great!


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