Let the work begin...later!

Well, the past hunting season is just a memory now and the 2009-2010 hunting season seems a long way off. In fact, if you consider January as the last month of hunting season and October as the first, we are basically right in the middle of the stretch. What that means to me is that the clock is ticking to get things done.

Things are a little trickier in farm country as it relates to getting down there and working. The first obstacle is wet ground. If you want to get on a farmer's bad side quick, drive on his roads when they are wet and make ruts! Since they must access their fields regularly, they value a good, solid roadbed. My strategy has always been to just avoid them if they are wet and not take a chance. Since it was raining yesterday in southeast AR, our project was delayed for a drier day. I have been working on a tower stand for the last few weeks and I wanted to take it to the property and finish the construction and get it stood up. The stand had to be left at the farmer's shop and put off for a while.

The other challenge is scheduling your work on the field itself. The best time is before soybeans are planted so that any driving on the field is irrelevant because there is no crop. This is handy if you have to drive from one side to the other or if you are using a truck, tractor or ATV to 'pull' stands up. There is also a small window of opportunity once the field is planted and before the crop comes up, as long the field is dry. Once these two times pass, it is quite a while before you can use the field for these activities. As you have probably guessed, I missed both of these!

The majority of our work will now have to be done during the heat of the summer and just before the actual hunting season. We do have two areas where we are going to place stands that will not require us using the field, but one new place will. The major obstacle right now is wet roads.

On another note, I got some great pictures on my game camera. There were several large-bodied deer that had obviously just lost their horns. I have temporarily removed the camera, but am anxious to get it back out there to record the deer as they grow their new sets of horns. I will post these pictures on www.ArkansasLifeHunting.com, so please visit and check them out. I also plan on writing an article about my 'learning experience' with a game camera. They have definitely provided me with an opportunity to have a lot of fun and they can also double as a scouting tool, but you can allow me to reduce your learning curve and have a more productive experience.