Helicopter, Fish and Big Deer....

On Monday afternoon, I made my way up to Princeton, IL. I pull into a new property about 10 minutes early and wait for a new client to show up. After a few minutes of nosing around the new Morton Building going up, here comes a helicopter...Yep, it comes in low and lands right out front. Jason waives me over and says get in....

So my first conversation with the guy who wants to build a waterskiing and wakeboarding lake is "are you sure this thing can hold an extra 300 lbs?" He goes "oh yeah we are real low on fuel so should be no problem....." Mighty reassuring getting into a helicopter that is low on fuel.....Can you imagine landing a helicopter that has run out of fuel.....


But needless to say it was stinkin awesome zipping around in that thing checking out the new lake site and such....Picture a nice water skiing lake in this cleared out valley.....




The week before I was in Cedar Rapids and Brighton, Iowa with Allen Electrofishing a bunch of lakes and ponds for 4 different landowners. Allen snapped some pretty cool pics....












The first guys place was an 8 year old pond that was stocked with bass, hybrid bluegill, crappie, catfish, walleye, and lots o grass carp.....recommendations from the Iowa DNR guy....that guy giving out those kind of recommendations is gutsy, but clueless.....One thing we take for granted here in Illinois is that we have ROCK SOLID DNR Fisheries Biologists from Southern Illinois all the way to the top of Northern Illinois...Randy's pond is now back on track....

Oh yeah also Randy's son and his son's friend both shot very nice deer the night before we arrived on the farm. Iowa has a youth shotgun season before their bow season starts.....hey Illinois boys how about that, let the kids get a crack at the big boys when the weather is nice and before yall go out and educate em....





Then up to Cedar Rapids for a couple places and spend the night at good friend Kevins place. So I met Kevin a couple years back at a national Pond Boss conference....took on the task of helping him grow monster bluegills over in Iowa and now because of him and his success we have shocked and made management plans for over a dozen of his buddies lakes and properties and now we are scheduling his buddies' buddies' places for next spring trip that way....very cool and lots of fun.

Drake is growing up fast. Here are a couple super hero shots:



Ok so he's growing up fast, but a little slow....but super smart all at the same time. He wants to wear underwear, but not quite ready to be potty trained. I got a good compromise with the combo and ok so he probably could or should be potty trained, but life is just a bit too busy and hectic to take on that task just finishing up this house and getting ready to move and such.... I did manage to squeeze a couple evenings in at the house and am getting the wood shakes up:


That gable is actually finished now, just dont have an updated pic...

Also in the last week we shocked some local lakes, stocked a couple ponds in Eastern Illinois with big stripers and feed trained bass and been getting some good trail cam pics sent in!!!








On Sunday I fell into a deep sleep at some point during the Bears-Rams game and didnt wake up until about 20 hours later. I got hit with a little bug (and some pain medication) that pretty much put me out. Anyhow back at it full force. Today the guys were plugging away on another dock project and I was meeting with Dr. Gumm about fencing options for his property and then up over near Gilson helping a client purchase his perfect 50 acre dream farm with a 2 acre pond....and making sure the dream farm all checks out...

Thursday Im stuck in the office, but Friday out to Taylorville for an electrofishing survey to help create a canadian themed lake......