I should have started a land tour a long time ago. But I didn't have any hunting success on our property until this past year. Probably 90% of my hunting has taken place on public land, but this year all the domino's fell into place.
My wife and I are both unskilled factory workers, living paycheck to paycheck. We lived in rental in properties for the first several years we were together. In 2013 and 2014 we were able to work a ton of hours, allowing us to clean up our credit scores and save a little for a down payment.
When we started looking our wish list included a small house for the 2 of us, with land for a couple horses. Didn't imagine we could afford anything with hunting land. After about 4 months of nothing we found a 2 bedroom foreclosure on 5 acres, with a horse barn and a pole building. The house needed to be updated, including minor septic and well work, which was confirmed by our house inspection, enabling us to get it for $65k.
Here's an overhead of the surrounding area.
The red dot is our 5 acres. The two green dots just south(15 acres) are owned by someone who I haven't seen in the 9 years we've been here. At the time of purchase the 3 blue dot properties (150 acres) were owned by a woman who never wandered off the 1 acre her house sat on. Although she did rent out the grass fields to someone who baled it. The two purple dots are owned by a sand and gravel company. The yellow dot to the north is public land, with more of that farther north. Off the picture to the east is 20 acres off ag, with more public behind it.
So my imagination led me to hope hunting might be possible, with no appreciable pressure surrounding us. On the first walkthrough I could tell deer frequented our place as all the red clover and alfalfa in the back of our property were being eaten.
Here's a closer look at our place. Once you account for the house, barn, pole building, and pasture for my wife's 3 horses, this left about 1.5 acres at the back. The top left corner drops off about 10 feet to a marsh, with an oak tree line just this side of it.
The first fall I killed some grass, through out a no plow mix, and set up a little ground blind.
I managed to call in a fork buck one morning, who just looked around from the treeline for a couple minutes before leaving. And then in early December our bloodhound was looking out the window one afternoon and spotted a huge buck walking through. Tracks showed he walked by about 20 yards from the ground blind.
Spent that whole winter planning all the things I would start working on in spring!
My wife and I are both unskilled factory workers, living paycheck to paycheck. We lived in rental in properties for the first several years we were together. In 2013 and 2014 we were able to work a ton of hours, allowing us to clean up our credit scores and save a little for a down payment.
When we started looking our wish list included a small house for the 2 of us, with land for a couple horses. Didn't imagine we could afford anything with hunting land. After about 4 months of nothing we found a 2 bedroom foreclosure on 5 acres, with a horse barn and a pole building. The house needed to be updated, including minor septic and well work, which was confirmed by our house inspection, enabling us to get it for $65k.
Here's an overhead of the surrounding area.
The red dot is our 5 acres. The two green dots just south(15 acres) are owned by someone who I haven't seen in the 9 years we've been here. At the time of purchase the 3 blue dot properties (150 acres) were owned by a woman who never wandered off the 1 acre her house sat on. Although she did rent out the grass fields to someone who baled it. The two purple dots are owned by a sand and gravel company. The yellow dot to the north is public land, with more of that farther north. Off the picture to the east is 20 acres off ag, with more public behind it.
So my imagination led me to hope hunting might be possible, with no appreciable pressure surrounding us. On the first walkthrough I could tell deer frequented our place as all the red clover and alfalfa in the back of our property were being eaten.
Here's a closer look at our place. Once you account for the house, barn, pole building, and pasture for my wife's 3 horses, this left about 1.5 acres at the back. The top left corner drops off about 10 feet to a marsh, with an oak tree line just this side of it.
The first fall I killed some grass, through out a no plow mix, and set up a little ground blind.
I managed to call in a fork buck one morning, who just looked around from the treeline for a couple minutes before leaving. And then in early December our bloodhound was looking out the window one afternoon and spotted a huge buck walking through. Tracks showed he walked by about 20 yards from the ground blind.
Spent that whole winter planning all the things I would start working on in spring!
