Quick trip to Iowa

Made a trip to Iowa for a few days last week. Here is a picture of corn being stored on the ground. Iowa had a record corn crop this fall and all the bins are full.


Sat out a few times to see how the deer herd looked. Iowa has a late January doe season so I did my part and shot a doe.

The deer are doing well eating the beans we left standing.

Its a little early for shed hunting but I did find a nice set laying in the snow.

11 points.

Deer beds in the brush.

Right before dark the deer poured out into the field.

I found an old house foundation on the property. Not sure what this is but looks to be a under ground storm shelter or a root cellar. When the snow is gone I will investagate this some more.

Iowa Deer Season 2009

We had high hopes of a great Iowa deer season this year. We had some food plots that were great and some that were really bad because of the wet summer.


This was going to be my lucky spot this year, I never saw a buck even close to being a shooter.

One of our big bean fields. The snow started on the night of the second day and never quit. We didn't hunt the last day because we had blizzard conditions.

The truck box again worked out great to get out of the snow.

You have to keep the heat on high to get icicles like this.

We would have breakfast in our rooms and be out the door by 5:30 am. Lunch in the blind and dinner in a restaurant every night.

Jim's truck with an ATV and 4 deer ready to head home in a blizzard.

Eric and Joel with great Iowa bucks. Joel got his on opening morning and Eric on the second night.

Jim waited until the last day we hunted to get this big eight pointer. Can't wait till next year.

Deer Camp 2009

Deer camp started out warm and sunny. Was a great day to catch a few trout out of Eagle Lake.


Ken with a beautiful Rainbow Trout.


Lots of stories told by the camp fire.


CO and Rick preparing the steaks for the annual dinner put on by CO.


CO the grill master.

Dinner is served.

We didn't shoot any bucks but we did take quite a few does.

A first this year was boning out a deer and grinding some up to make chili later and grilling some for dinner.

Grinding the venison.

Ken is a master at grilling venison steak.

This is what a big buck looks like. Brian shot this Wednesday night in the hills.

Grandparents Day

Today Mary and I went to Grandparents day at Zeeland Christain where Gisele goes to a Young Three's class.


It was a lot of fun. They had us help her with 4 craft type projects. One was to paint her face.


Gisele with two of her Grandmas.

The theme for the day was a circus. Here she colored a horse and put it in a circus wagon that she made.

Grandma Mary cutting out a picture. It was a fun morning. We saw a lot of people we went to school with and now we are together again at our grandkids school events .

Work week in Iowa.

Spent the past week in Iowa working on the property with Junior Huyser.


We put up three double gates. It went quite well
and the weather was perfect.



The finished gates.

On Wednesday Jason and Dan Huyser arrived to help put up four deer blinds. The blinds were there but we had to screw in the ten foot legs.

At age 80 Junior makes it look easy. He is such a big help for me, I couldn't do it without him.

We got all the legs on the end by of the day on Wednesday.

Thursday was wet most of the day but with rain gear we kept working.

Blind in place in the middle of a soybean field.

Last month we put out some trail cameras.

Here are a few of the better bucks we got pictures of.

Back to Iowa

Putting in a gate post.


Went to Iowa this past week with Mary's Dad. Here we are unloading poles that we are using to make gate post.


We put in six poles for gates.



We also put out 5 trail cameras to try to get some pictures of the deer on the property.


These are water tanks that we will fill with water from a pond behind them and use the water for spraying the fields. Before we had to haul water from town on a trailer.

Here are some young Iowa bucks on a bean field.

Junior Huyser standing in one of our better bean food plots.

We also mowed all the trails, Iowa has had a lot of rain this year and everything is really tall.