Turkeys, Deer and More

This week, we went to Ann Arbor for my niece Sheryl's MBA graduation from U of M.  We got home Saturday evening so I headed to the farm by myself on Sunday.  On Monday I will be in Pittsburgh for a steel conference so the farm is on the way (sort of).

When I pulled in at the farm, The main field was full of turkeys, several of them in full strut.  When I checked the cameras, there were losts of shots.  I decided to just post most of them.

Afternoon.

Evening

Afternoon

Evening

Morning

Afternoon

Evening

This is my decoy set up - a hen and a jake.  I hunted for about 2 hours without any luck.  I guess that I scared them off when I drove up the driveway.  Although when I was filling up an atv with with gas, a hen walked right thru the orchard. After today, there is a new rule allowing afternoon hunting.  Unfortunately, I'll be travelling for a couple of weeks.

I decided to spray the food plots with some weed killer and I had a couple of issues.  First, there was a dead bat on my gas nozzle.  Then, when I put the nozzle in the tank, the pipe fell off of the nozzle into the tank.  I made a pretty wimpy effort at trying to fish it out and then decided to leave it for Van.  He'll have a clever way to retrieve it I'm sure.  It didn't bother anything in there while I sprayed the fields.

 The cameras also had some predators this week.  Coyotes showed up twice. 

 They will be slinking around looking for newly born fawns and also turkey poults.

The fox would like to find those turkey eggs.

I think it's a month or more until the does have their fawns but some of them are looking pregnant.

The ones that were too young to breed last Fall are just looking scrawny after a hard winter.

This is an older looking buck and his pedicles are starting to show signs of growing new antlers.

A younger looking buck.

Here I am spraying the fields with an atv that has an extra pipe in its tank. This is a new trailcam that I picked up on sale at Cabelas in Dundee MI.  I have a couple cameras on their last legs.

I got a few chores done before it started to sprinkle at about 6:00.  Disked plots again in addition to spraying for weeds.