Updated Deer Condo Pics!

We finished the shooting windows, carpet, and painted the deer hunting condo today. This baby is ready to hunt!

Also here is an updated pic of the food plot looking out the front window of the hunting blind. Green Patch Plus:

We also put in some deer utilization cages to monitor deer browsing on many of the food plots. If the plants grow better in the cages it means the deer are browsing the plots pretty heavy. If the plots grow poorly in the cages and poorly out of the cages it means something is not quite right either with the soil, seeds, weather, etc.

Also we are turning this 30 acre lake into a 55 acre lake. Very cool project, we are putting in a dam that is 160 yards long and 6 feet high. Raising the lake this level will connect another 8 acre lake with a dug trench and flood quite a bit of other area as well! Raising water absolutely makes fish populations grow HUGE! Everytime we flood a pond or lake, the fish grow like weeds. Here are some construction pics:

Was a good day! Been jampacked since 6 am this morning, I just wish there was more time in the day. I also met with Brad Belser of Bradley Blinds to go over a few goose pit locations. Tomorrow I head out to Southern Illinois to electrofish a handful of lakes on a mini road trip. Next week I will be starting to move some fish into their new homes, electrofishing a few lakes locally, holding a flyfishing day at the fishing park on Saturday, and heading up north Salmon fishing with In-Fisherman guy Steve Ryan on Sunday. I will stay up north sunday night and do a full lake audit with electrofishing survey up near Chicago on monday morning for a big lake association before heading home.

Building a Deer Blind for Hunting

Today Justin and I built a deer hunting blind for a client. He had a 2 acre horse pen with a couple outdoor horse stalls from several years ago that was overgrown with weeds. We cleared out all the weeds from the old pasture and planted buck oats with some green patch plus a couple weeks ago. Then we turned the old horse stalls into an enclosed hunting blind for our clients dad to sit in during shotgun season. Here are some pics during construction:






The blind is 10x10 feet with a 6 and 1/2 foot ceiling. The shooting windows are 38 inches off the floor and are 40" wide and 12" tall. The clear plexiglass is 1/4" thick and slides up. The deer already move through the old horse pen, but strategically moving some old fence rows and planting some nice green juicy plants and this spot is going to be dynamite! Here are a couple pics from the trail camera looking out over the food plot.

I will post some pics of the painted and completed blind along with pictures of the food plot as the greens continue growing. The rain today definitely will help! Also the field was so full of old manure, the soil actually tested real good for growing stuff.

Monster Buck Eating Freshly Planted Buck Forage Oats in Food Plot

We cleared out some timber for a client and planted buck forage oats 2 weeks ago. We first had to lime the ground and fertilize the soil very heavy since the land was mostly strip mine spoils. Anyhow the buck forage oats are coming in very good and the deer are starting to congregate!

Here is a video of a monster typical Illinois buck spending time with the ladies eating in the food plot. Also in the first two weeks of this new plot and trail camera we have captured video of several of this buck's competition as well.



I had to switch the trail camera from video mode to still pictures. We had over 300 videos taken in the first 10 days of placing the camera and that took forever to download and sort through. The still images are way easier and faster to inventory the deer herd.

Huge Smallmouth, Largemouth, and Hybrid Striped Bass from Central Illinois!

Fishing was actually tough with the cold front, high pressure, and wind, but the lack of quantity was made up with quality. Here are a few highlights from the weekend of fishing.

Here is a huge smallmouth caught by Pat West on Friday night at one of our featured properties.

Tyden and Chef Todd also caught some nice smallies, but Pat's definitely takes the cake.

Pat also caught some nice green carp too.



Chad caught some nice largemouth as well, this bass was so huge that his fishing partner could fit her entire hand into this fishes mouth!

Justin caught this Hybrid Striped Bass using a tiny strike king mini crankbait!

Chef Todd caught this northern pike right off the dock using a number 3 blue fox spinner.

As for me, I pretty much caught nothing worthy of taking a photo. I lost about a 14 inch crappie at the boat, caught some small stripers and walleye, but didnt get any wall hangers like the boys above!

Shark, Doves, Ponds, Food Plots, and Solar Aeration

Pond and lake management is on the downhill slide for summer maintenance, but we are eagerly gearing up for fish stockings and electrofishing surveys this fall. We got alot of stuff happening at the moment because work stuff is in complete transition, summer help is gone, plus add in a whole bunch of land management stuff like food plots, timber clearing, and hanging deer stands, plus throw in the start of football season, also the fish are really starting to bite, and my family needs a little time, plus been helping my brother in law build his house on top of a few fishing park outings and life is pretty crazy at the moment. Oh yeah, I backed my truck into my office managers car today as I was leaving in a hurry to go install an aeration system too. I love the chaos and busyness of managing 30 things at the same time, but dont love the whole car smashing thing. Anyhow here are some pics and stories from the last week or so:

We cooked Mako shark, deer burgers, and grilled bananas at our Outdoor Lunch with Chef Todd at the fishing park last Friday. We had 100 people come out for lunch!! I am super thankful for everyone who has helped out this summer! Here is Charlie Bracket and Chef Todd cooking up the last of the food:



Justin and I built this deck for a client's house overlooking his lake. What a view! The deck only took us one day to build. The bench seats are much better than typical boring railings.

Here are some food plots coming in real nice after last weeks rain. We have planted round up ready beans, clovers, turnips, brassicas, winter wheat, buck oats, and all kinds of other biologic mixes for several different clients this fall. Here are some pics of our own plots.

We installed this solar aerator last night for a 2 acre pond near Roseville. Our water tests showed the pond has 500 ppb of phosphates and ideally we like to see that number below 100 ppb. This particular solar aerator not only mixes water, but it also has a special polymer log that will filter the nutrients out of the water. We also will be planting lots of water lilies and wetland plants in the shallow water to act as a natural wetland filter as well. This pond had a major fish kill this summer, but is now on track to grow some monster fish in the years to come!

I did a consultation for a family looking to purchase this acreage outside of Metamora. They love the land, but want to make sure they can build a pond in this front gulley before pulling the trigger. They can build the pond, but it won't be as big as they hoped.

Been clearing some trash trees with the loftness timber ax and turning some nice useless pockets into major wildlife zones!

Here is a row of turnips connecting two big food plots.

This tower blind we took down and moved to one of the new food plots for a client:

This plot is tucked down in a valley and is coming in real nice!!! You can see the row of turnips down the center.

I was invited to a dove hunt with a client and whole bunch of his buddies on september 2nd. He had a real nice set up with sunflowers and we all had a great time shooting at doves.... We did hit a few and my partner Pat had a dog that would go fetch em for us. If you haven't done it yet, you got to go plant some sunflowers and have a dove hunting party next season! Eating the brisket and pulled pork is icing on the cake to compliment a great hunt, but watching the dog do his thing is definitely the highlight of the day.

Jared and Amy had their company picnic out at the lake on Friday evening. Chef Todd came out and cooked up a feast of chili glazed quail, pork chops, and special mushroom sauce chicken.

I put up a new dog kennel at the lake to keep the dogs in at night. Anyhow the kids spent about 6 hours playing in the new kennel.

These young deer must of thought I was a retarded human pulled over on the side of the road bleating out loud like a sick deer and snapping pics. They just stared me down.

I did a consultation for a doctor with a new house and an inherited pond. The pond needed dredged so that was priority number one. Next step we will be electrofishing to assess the current fish population later this month and will be stocking or removing whatever fish are necessary to establish a natural balanced population. Here is a pic of the dredger being unloaded:

I watched some football games and did alot of fishing over the holiday weekend. I am going to dedicate a complete thread for the fish pics, because I have like 15 pics of huge fish. We caught some monster smallmouth bass, northern pike, hybrid striped bass, and largemouth bass. Here is just one pic, the rest will follow on another day. Anyhow this is perhaps the biggest smallmouth bass caught in Illinois this year! She is a beast!! Pat West caught it during Plattner Orthopedics company picnic at our lake on Friday evening: