Game Poachers

The weather has continued to be very nice. Only one windy cool day. We finished clearing cedar at the cutoff trail to the barn. It makes the lower pasture larger and improves the view of a nice stand of Live Oaks. Will still have several stumps to burn-out there over the winter. I did get winter rye grass planted over the new areas covered with top soil. It didn't rain, but perhaps we'll get some soon. We did water the area close to the house and pool. We got a lot of outside work done and the ranch really hasn't looked better. We are very lucky to live in such a beautiful place. Of course there has been a lot of hard work done carving out our little place on the mountain.

The pool company finally has an acceptable surface and color installed on the pool deck. We will probably add a second color ourselves in order to get the look we really wanted. Today with the deck finally finished they did install the pebbletek surface in the pool itself. It looks great even before the acid wash scheduled for tomorrow. It looks like they will begin filling it with water tomorrow afternoon. Wow, it's about time.

This is the second week of deer season and there were a lot of hunters in the area again over the weekend. In fact we had a poacher on Friday night. They shot a deer right on my road, probably from the county road. The blood impact and splatter was very obvious on the white gravel road. By luck I found the bleed out spot about 100+ feet into the brush under a cedar tree up on lower part of Ray's Ridge. There was no animal so I don't know if the poachers got it or the suspected cat or some other varmit. It really makes one wonder and I'm not that keen on confronting a probably drunk poacher with a gun. We did set the alarms at the entry and that does help. I suspect they shot the deer but didn't come into the property when the deer didn't fall on the spot. I did check the goats at night while scouting for poachers and noticed they now stay together in a nice grouping. Haven't lost any more since the little runt.

The deer have been fairly active. I do see the lone bucks roaming around. They come by even in the middle of the day. They are right in the middle of rut right now and really move around. The photo above was taken this morning and the haze is from the sun reflecting on the window of the front door. There were two does out there and they looked very natural around the house.

We have several relatives coming to mind the ranch while we take a little holiday. Another reason to get it in good shape. I know they will enjoy it.