Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Ugh I feel terrible killing dang turkeys here but I take a little solice in knowing it’s late in the season and hopefully he did what he needed to do already. Little 5:00 action.
A little further down the road from Paradise
- Thread starter Howboutthemdawgs
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Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
I wish I could say consistently. Buddy and I killed one last year last week on the same plot. I had just sat down to watch my daughter play at like 4:00. Actually just poured a little sipper and hadn’t even taken a sip when I swore I heard him gooble. Walked out into the yard and stood there for like 10 minutes until he did again. Ran inside and changed, told my wife that’s a dead bird. 30 minutes later I was back at the cabin.
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
Nice job. I wish I had not taken it for granted when I used to be able to kill 3 toms a year. It has been a long time now since I have killed one, there are days when I wonder if I will ever kill another one again. Though I will admit I don't put much effort into even thinking about hunting them anymore.
Cool Hand Luke
5 year old buck +
Congratulations!
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Little driveway security cam teaser. Good potential for early May. But like my PE teacher told me…all potential means is you ain’t worth a $hit right now
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Got my deer back I shot 18 months ago…not knocking the taxidermist as I hear they are all swamped. She did a great job to me.
Also did some porch watching last two evenings. Got some way too early prospects but have one with 8 points and about 110” of antler so far
Also did some porch watching last two evenings. Got some way too early prospects but have one with 8 points and about 110” of antler so far
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Sometimes you need to call for reinforcements. Needed a new road built that would have taken too long with my equipment. My farmer has a d5 so we traded some rent for dozer time. Money well spent. His guy put in a solid 6 hours and we knocked a crazy amount of work out. Got 2 new roads built and cleaned up a couple more. Single most impactful day on my farm that didn’t include buying a neighbor
Everybody thinks their shoulder mount taxidermist is the best, but that looks like a really quality job!
What about the mini-ex?!
Doesn’t seem like many folks here appreciate what a small dozer with a 6way blade can do.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
In all honesty about all of it could have been done with the mini but my god, it would have taken weeks just to drive all the places we went. A dozer is sneaky fast
So you’d never been around a dozer before??
Seriously, I’m glad to hear that from someone that has now seen both. I’d been reading all the excavator praise and thinking I was missing something.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Oh yeah. I’ve operated a new d2 which was the 5. They are so awesome. But bang for the buck I’m still in the excavator camp. It’s so versatile. Now if I were rich…I’d have both without a doubt
Please don’t think I’m being argumentative. I’m genuinely trying to pick your brain. That was a $40-60k ($100/hr rented) machine. Are you saying that there are other tasks the dozer just can’t do?
I think most of my equipment jobs are heavy duty, dirt moving, clearing and wide road (not “trail”) construction Maybe that has me biased.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
I don’t take it that way and I’m not the authority on equipment so take what I say with a grain of salt
The excavator can dig ditches, grade, clear roads, clear food plots, place debris, among other specialized tasks.
The dozer is awesome for moving mass. It can take down trees, grade roads, etc but it lacks finesse. I’m going to have behind him and make my roads nicer and do my own water runoff work.
It was like a monkey humping a football trying to put that culvert in. Definitely not the best tool for that job.
The dozer is like a nascar compared to a flinstone car in terms of speed though. But…something breaks or it brakes down in the woods, you are entering a world of pain. And moving one is no easy task.
So that’s my take on the difference. Like I said I’d love both. But with a finite budget I’m still leaning excavator.
SD51555
5 year old buck +
Lots of machines can do a job. You have to know which one is best for your job.
If you're making road in the woods, it's a dozer. If it's a road in the prairie, it's a motorgrader. If you need to do a lot of digging and not so much traveling, an excavator is the tool. If you need to do a little digging and a lot of traveling, a backhoe loader is the tool because it travels faster and can be roaded from dig to dig vs needing to be put on a trailer. If you need to spread a little material in a lot of places and level it out, the skid steer is the tool.
When it comes to most habitat work, the excavator is the most versatile. Its great for digging, grabbing, placing, stacking, burying. Nothing else can do that much. What an excavator is terrible at is moving material any distance. I had to dig pits next to my blind locations because I couldn't move dirt from where I wanted to take it, to where I needed it to make the elevated platforms. Now I have two large pits I need to fill with other stuff to eliminate the hazard of a hole in the woods.
One will eventually get dirt when I rent a skid steer, another can only be filled with junk wood because I don't have fill readily stacked (like what I'd have done with the excavator) anywhere nearby that I can use there. And frankly, if I move that blind someday, I want to be able to put the dirt back where it was. I already have a dirt pile from a previous blind location that I need to scoop up and put the dirt back from where it was taken.
You're asking great questions. Keep going. Figure out what you want to do first, then find the right tool to do it. But always be thinking about where you're gonna go with stuff, because when stuff starts moving, it has to go somewhere. I buried the entire forest underneath my new plot. Only tool that was gonna do all of that was the excavator.
b116757
5 year old buck +
I own two track loaders I keep one on each farm one is a Cat 951c the other is a Cat 955L really tough to beat for farm use. I can lift and carry stuff, drive pipe posts, raise the bucket push over a tree in a few seconds that a dozer would have to dig out because the blade is so low then I back up hook the rootball and the tree is gone. They are not as good at final grading, the dozer will win hands down on that.
For my spot, a track loader would probably be the most ideal. I don’t see many in these parts for some reason.
