Can you believe that dove season is less than a month away?
Following that is the early Canada goose season and early teal season, followed by archery deer season, muzzleloader deer season, gun deer season, duck season and even bear season.
If you love the outdoors, especially hunting and fishing, there is much to love in Arkansas.
Even though this has been one of the prettiest, most enjoyable summers of my 50 years, I'll be glad to see it go. No, that's not quite right. I'll miss summer, but I'll be glad for autumn. It has always been my favorite season, and though I have become very fond of spring, it probably always will be.
Signs are everywhere. A lot of doves are lingering around my little corner of Hot Spring County. We always have a few, but there seems to be more this year, probably because of the banner crop of sunflowers in our back lot. I've a mind to take up raccoon hunting, too. After 26 years of gardening, this was the year I was finally going to get a corn crop. Days before it ripened, coons got it all, and now they're after my watermelons.
My neighbor at the bottom of the hill usually borrows a herd of goats from another neighbor to keep the brush and weeds in check in his lower pasture. He didn't do it this year, and his field has grown into a dense thicket.
A doe whitetail deemed it a wonderful place to raise her two fawns, and they're never far from the thicket's protective cover. They browse in the woods on the other side of the road during my morning and evening walks, but they dash back to the thicket when I pass. I always see them gazing back at me. The fawns are almost as big as their mother now, but they still have the soft, rounded faces of yearlings.
I visited my deer lease in Grant County this week, and I was delighted. The place is in superb condition because of the rain. It is usually tinderbox dry in August, and everything is usually so brown and brittle. Now it's green and lush. A clover patch I've been cultivating for the past three years is finally come into its own. It's small, but it represents a lot of hard work, and deer are using it.
I positioned a couple of trail cameras to see what's visiting. Not that it matters. Bucks I photograph in August and September never seem to visit this spot in October and November.
Last summer I bought a product called Bag R' Buck from the Farmer's Co-op in Malvern. It's a burlap bag filled with minerals and salt. Tie it to a limb, and rainwater filters through the bag and drips minerals into the dirt. I put up several, and deer have eaten out big craters beneath the bags. The supply will probably last through the winter. The guy who made them went out of business. I bought the last four bags Friday, but the good fellow that runs the place told me how to make my own.
I also filled one feeder with high-protein deer pellets mixed with Buck Nut additive from Insights Nutrition. It's a high-fat, high-carbohydrate additive that deer really like either in a mix or spread on the ground. I checked that camera Friday, but no deer have visited.
The timber company that owns the land I lease thinned out the big pine thicket behind my primary stand in a hollow. They logged every third row and transformed the landscape into something that's very attractive for deer. Before, it was dark and dense. It was good sanctuary habitat, but there was nothing to eat. Now, with so much ground exposed to sunlight, the cleared rows are green.
As the thicket closed in, the stand in the hollow became increasingly less productive each year. I only hunted it in muzzleloader season because I never see deer there during gun season. The thinning put it back in play, as the last cleared row is only 80 yards away.
There is so much left to do. I need to clear brush and remove trees that have fallen across trails that lead to other stands. Saplings need to be cut, as does brush that encroaches into shooting lanes. I need to move another stand that is no longer productive.
Meanwhile, there is still a lot of fishing left to do this month, and I have some new places I want to scout for duck hunting.
So much to do, and so little time. For a sportsman, it's a good problem to have.
Sports on 08/10/2014