Gleaton Chip Ranch Updates

[Droptine3030]

You’ve been hitting home runs with the updates lately with pics 👍🏻

[bgleaton]

Here are a couple of recent trail cam pictures.

[bgleaton]

The silver river clover is waist high in some areas that we planted last fall. Most of our fall plots have this silver river clover along with some thistles but underneath the waist high clovers/thistles is some chicory and other beneficial forbs. I'm assuming that these taller plants have allowed these other beneficial plants to grow and keep the soil cooler. I hate thistles but I can see that the soil is definitely cooler where these are versus the areas that is only 6 to 10-inches tall.

[bgleaton]

We went out to the ranch this weekend and installed another round of Mossback habitat on the backside of the pond. We have a lot of grass in the spots less than 4ft deep so we installed all of this habitat within 6-7ft of each other in 8-10ft deep. Several of these habitats are for bluegills and small forage and two of the habitats are for bass to loaf around and feed on the forage. We removed 7 bass from the pond that were skinnyish. We noticed that a couple of the Mossback “root wad” units we installed last year were covered in grass bc they were in 3ft of water. They weren’t adding much structure so we pushed them out a little deeper (5ft) so the forage fish can go from the grass to the structures.

The bass are getting bigger. My son’s friend caught one that was 4lbs 6oz and several 3 pounders. Seeing lots of bluegills and the tilapia are getting bigger. Hoping to see lots of baby tilapia next trip out there.

we got a 1.4in of rain yesterday.

[bgleaton]

I am really happy so much hard work and resources has been such a success.

We have a small family place here. So far it has not happened, but I am concerned that someday we may have a problem on who gets to shoot the only “trophy” ( mature deer) we have.

How are y’all handling that ? Sorry if you have covered this in the past 128 pages.

Fortunately, we have to shoot 10-20 deer per year depending on the rainfall and fawn crop that year but we normally only allow for one true trophy every year or two. Between my brothers and I we normally agree before the season on who gets to shoot a trophy and have an understanding that if someone has the ability to get a shot at the trophy then they are able to take it because it’s hard enough to be in the right place at the right time. My brothers and I rarely ever shoot any bucks so it’s between all of our kids, cousins, and our kids friends. We always have several bucks each year that we see before season but never see them in person once season starts.

[Big pig]

I am really happy so much hard work and resources has been such a success.

We have a small family place here. So far it has not happened, but I am concerned that someday we may have a problem on who gets to shoot the only “trophy” ( mature deer) we have.

How are y’all handling that ? Sorry if you have covered this in the past 128 pages.

[bgleaton]

Comming along nicely.. Any talk of shooting any trophy deer this year ?

Yes, we will probably harvest at least one trophy and then several culls along with 10+ doe depending on our deer surveys.

[Droptine3030]

Comming along nicely.. Any talk of shooting any trophy deer this year ?

[Puncher51]

Bucks are looking real good!

[bgleaton]

Here are some recent pictures of some bucks hitting one of our cottonseed feeders.

[bgleaton]

I’m guessing that one buck is the one y’all call “big brows” or something along those lines? Great bucks!

We do have a buck called "Big Brows" but that's not him. Big Brows has had bladed brow tines with kickers in the past. I'm hopeful Big Brows blows up this year since last year he was down quite a bit.

[Puncher51]

I’m guessing that one buck is the one y’all call “big brows” or something along those lines? Great bucks!

[bgleaton]

Here's a picture of another buck.

[bgleaton]

Here are some good pictures of a couple of bucks at one of our feeders and a blackbuck at another feeder.

[bgleaton]

My son and a couple of his buddies went out there for a night this past week. We topped off our cottonseed feeders and our smaller protein feeders. It’s so green out there, we are still seeing chicory and silver river clovers growing from our fall plots.

We saw a lot of bigger tilapia in the big pond. We are hoping that these bigger tilapia will start reproducing to add more forage. We are seeing lots of bluegills so the hope is the tilapia will add even more forage while keeping the algae controlled. So far, there is zero algae out there growing which was great to see.