More Ice Fishing Pics and Dead Deer

Here are some pics from an ice fishing outing from a 1/3 acre pond we are helping Roger intensively manage over near Goodfield. Small ponds across Central Illinois are producing some of the biggest fish in the state these days.....




Chef Todd, Tom Brown III, and Brett E hit a good pile of fish at the Cemetary Lake just a couple days ago...The ice isnt safe anymore though....



Tom Brown III has set up shop over near Washburn and is gonna be teaching his world famous survival and primitive wilderness classes this summer- his website isnt updated yet with new info, but should be soon: http://primitiveac.com/ I'm definitely gonna be poking around at some of the classes this summer and hopefully y'all will be too!!

While filming with InFisherman TV a couple weeks ago, local artist Doug Sherman came out and took a bunch of pics:











So anyhow, I had several more outdoor shows scheduled to come and film ice fishing this season and had to cancel em all cause we only had safe ice for about 5 days......I have always been a very shy, unsocial, terrible in front of a camera or a crowd person my whole life, but over the last couple years have been pushing myself to come out of my shell and now am getting to the point where I look forward to public speaking and even can think straight somewhat with a camera in my face!

So Doug S brought all those pics by my office this week and I asked him to also bring some sample of his wildlife artwork....I was absolutely blown away with the quality of his paintings...a 10 minute meeting turned into the whole afternoon talking about art.... Here are some pics of Doug's artwork, he paints pictures for companies and they turn his paintings into T-Shirts and other cool stuff...In fact many of you guys have probably worn a tshirt with a whitetail or other animal he has painted originally.....




Im telling you I was never more impressed with anything than I was with the detail on the paintings that he brought in....I just took these pics with my phone to show my brothers but just had to share em....






So I am not really that into ART and paintings and stuff, but for the last week can't get those paintings out of my mind and can't stop thinking about having some hanging on my walls!! Especially I want a painting of a fish with my property in the background!

So this week I spent a couple days up in the Dells at an indoor mega waterpark with Brook's family...We had a blast:



We got back about midnight last night and then spent the day looking for sheds at our hunting property....we didnt find any sheds, but we did find 13 dead deer and 2 of them were very large bucks:



So anyhow, It's mid-february already and even though this winter has flown by, I am now ready for SPRING!!! Since the ice isnt safe down here, I am headed up to Sturgeon Bay this weekend to ice fish for whitefish, brown trout, and northern pike....If all goes well on this trip, I hope to plan a trip up north like this with a bunch of guys every year!! I have talked to lots of people about whitefish fishing up north and everyone who has gone has loved it!