When I joined a hunting club in East Texas it was my first time finding out about property maintenance. Twice a year everyone was required to come to the property and do their part. We trimmed along roads and shooting lanes. Did repair work on the various dirt roads. We planted food plots and sometimes we would completely move a blind to a more productive area. Each of us was assigned an area we were allowed to hunt and could have one box blind on the ground or one tower blind and one portable tree stand or ladder stand. Those blinds needed maintenance too. We had over 5,000 acres leased from a timber company, so nothing was allowed to be nailed or screwed to a tree. The timber company took mostly the pine trees and piled the hardwoods in the middle of the clear cut. We'd go to the piles and cut firewood and bring it back to camp. Someone would bring a log splitter and we'd split the bigger ones. We had a few permanent structures/camp houses in camp. These had been grandfathered in, but we weren't allowed to build any new ones. So, most of us used RV's that had to be removed at the end of deer season. We had running water from a nearby spring that was pumped in to a large holding tank on a raised platform. From there everything was gravity fed. We had electricity from an army surplus diesel generator and we had an outhouse. All of that needed maintenance too. So, we didn't have much leisure time during the day on those two weekends we were doing maintenance. But, we had fun each night as we downed copious amounts of adult beverages and retold stories of past hunts, with just a smidgen of exaggeration added for a little extra drama!
Work south of you in Mississippi demonstrated the interaction of genetics and environment, epigentics, can be important to antler and body size. I've seen that myself here in eastern Montana. Typically, our yearling bucks are spikes or two points (western count). With a good year of rain and an open winter, I've seen an entire crop of yealrings carry 4-point racks. Pretty incredible. Only to be wiped out the same year due to drought and EHD.
When I joined a hunting club in East Texas it was my first time finding out about property maintenance. Twice a year everyone was required to come to the property and do their part. We trimmed along roads and shooting lanes. Did repair work on the various dirt roads. We planted food plots and sometimes we would completely move a blind to a more productive area. Each of us was assigned an area we were allowed to hunt and could have one box blind on the ground or one tower blind and one portable tree stand or ladder stand. Those blinds needed maintenance too. We had over 5,000 acres leased from a timber company, so nothing was allowed to be nailed or screwed to a tree. The timber company took mostly the pine trees and piled the hardwoods in the middle of the clear cut. We'd go to the piles and cut firewood and bring it back to camp. Someone would bring a log splitter and we'd split the bigger ones. We had a few permanent structures/camp houses in camp. These had been grandfathered in, but we weren't allowed to build any new ones. So, most of us used RV's that had to be removed at the end of deer season. We had running water from a nearby spring that was pumped in to a large holding tank on a raised platform. From there everything was gravity fed. We had electricity from an army surplus diesel generator and we had an outhouse. All of that needed maintenance too. So, we didn't have much leisure time during the day on those two weekends we were doing maintenance. But, we had fun each night as we downed copious amounts of adult beverages and retold stories of past hunts, with just a smidgen of exaggeration added for a little extra drama!
Work south of you in Mississippi demonstrated the interaction of genetics and environment, epigentics, can be important to antler and body size. I've seen that myself here in eastern Montana. Typically, our yearling bucks are spikes or two points (western count). With a good year of rain and an open winter, I've seen an entire crop of yealrings carry 4-point racks. Pretty incredible. Only to be wiped out the same year due to drought and EHD.