Cheers to You, Fall

Yesterday marked the first day of Autumn, hand up if this is your favorite time of year!  To mark the arrival of the new equinox we even busted out some Fall / Halloween decorations.  The act prompted a serious debate with the Queen on the accepted timing of décor placement.  My obsessive compulsive tendencies dictate a regimented schedule for autumn activities:  Sept. 1- begin burning apple scented candles; Sept. 15- transition to apple/pumpkin candles, begin eating peanuts mixed with 3:1 ratio of candy corn; Oct 1- pumpkin candles, decorate with pumpkins & mums and commence baking all things pumpkin.      

 

The arrival of the glorious season marks the awakening of our shotguns from their summer slumber.  Dove hunting on indian summer evenings really gives you all the feelings!  Nothing humbles you quicker than trying to hit a walnut sized target whizzing through the air at 100 mph.

      

By the time I am mixing candy corns with peanuts and searching for caramel covered green apple suckers, it's time for early teal season.  Early Teal Season is a gateway season for regular duck season which is still a few weeks away.  

Birds & Bees

Spring has taken off like a rocket!  Turkey season was really weird...first, Kansas reduced hunters to just one spring turkey tag instead of two and then to lessen the spread of the Rona, out-of-state tags were eliminated.  None of the weirdness kept us from laying the hammer down!!

Things have been really busy at the farm, the new and improved garden has been planted, complete with new drip irrigation system.  The bee keeping operation has really expanded.  Earlier in the spring we caught two swarms of bees and did some hive splits.  Putting a swarm of bees into a hive is one of the coolest things to witness in nature.  You basically shake the swarm of bees out onto a bed sheet and they quickly organize and proceed to march directly into the hive.  Click on the picture below to watch the video!   

 
In just a few weeks we will be planting the first round of pumpkins in the new and improved patch.  This year the patch will be almost an acre!

You Want Cheese On That?

Filling the entire Narrows with the heavenly aroma of lightly charred grain fed beef is the marriage of my two favorite things...fishing and eating!  The Pike were a bit slow during the day, but the walleye got hot in a hurry along with the cheeseburgers!  BOOM!!!  Get some suckers!!!!  

"What's the use of life if you don't live it?"

                                                              ~Lee Brice  

It's Harvest Time

The rain finally stopped long enough to unload the animals from the ark and roll out the combines.  One report said it has rained 43% of the days since May 1st, its rained so much the gauges now measure in fathoms rather than inches.

The summer harvest is always a busy time which makes for hard work and long days.  Farming is the only job I know where you spend a dollar to make a quarter, the way this wheat harvest is going will prove no exception.

Finn loves spending time on the farm, he represents the 5th generation getting their hands dirty on this land.

Long Beards and Belt Buckles

My good friend Maverick Engelhart of Maverick Design produced this poster for the Hunt.  

Man do I love turkey hunting in Wyoming!  The landscape is just how I image the old west looked in 1876 when General Custer and the 7th Calvary marched through this place headed west to meet their fate at the Battle of Little Bighorn.  The abundance of wildlife is amazing....deer, antelope, elk and turkeys are around every corner.  Not to mention the host community of Hulett knows how to throw a party, after all they have been doing it for a while, this was the 10th Annual Old West Invitational Turkey Shoot.  Each spring, the Old West Invitational Turkey Shoot (OWITS) is held in Hulett, WY, with Devils Tower National Monument as the backdrop. The event is a cooperative effort with a two-pronged goal; raise funds for two great non-profits and promote wildlife conservation in Wyoming.

We were paired with two hunters for the hunt:  Paul Bennick is an Army veteran from Buffalo, WY and Ryan Bronson is the Director of Conservation and Policy for Vista Outdoor.  Both Paul and Ryan are accomplished hunters (which makes guiding so much easier).  Ryan nailed it when he described turkey hunting as, "a series of 50/50 events", he explained his theory this way, "50% of the time the setup is right and the bird goes this way and not that way, but the other 50% of the time, nothing goes right and the bird gives you the slip".  This hunt proved his theory as the early morning setups were nothing more than a front row seat to a symphony of gobbling and a good nap followed by frustration when the toms would fly down from the roost and follow hens off in the opposite direction of our setup.  However, on back to back days we were able to call birds up out of the same draw allowing both Paul and Ryan to tag out.   CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO

Low and behold Paul's bird scored well enough to get him a belt buckle placing 3rd overall in the Hunt.  Buckles are awarded to the top three teams with the biggest bird (hunter, guide and landowner get buckles for each place).  Ben collected the 3rd Place Guide buckle! 

King of the Spring

No better way to get the juices flowing in the early morning before championship baseball!

Scored the come from behind game tying run and the go ahead run in the same inning!

Double Down

The Kansas Rut did not disappoint this year.  Activity in the woods really started to pick-up around November 5th and was absolutely crazy by the 10th & 11th.  The full moon in late October may have played a part in some boring evenings in the tree, but true to form, my favorite three day stretch of November 9-10-11 produced in a big way. 

 
I was thrilled to get a text from my boy informing me he had shot a buck.  I hated to steal his thunder, so I didn't tell him I had also shot a buck.  It wasn't until we had loaded his deer and were driving out of the field and he noticed we weren't on the road out and asked where we were going that I told him we needed to go load my buck.