Whew!!!

Can you say "tired"?

My ass is dragging tonight! I won't say that I'm out of shape, but I do know I have to start walking more if I'm going to hunt this year. I recruited my neighbor next door to go help me put up a few more treestands today. And after about 4 hours of walking through the woods, trudging up and down hills, climbing trees, trimming branches. hanging off the side of trees while attaching the stands...did I mention the trudging up and down hills? My knees are killing me now.

Next Saturday is the opening day of bowseason here in Alabama and I've been a little too busy with other stuff lately or I would have had all this done a month ago. Now it's crunch time and I had to make up for putting it off this long. We got 3 more stands up (for a total of 4) and I also set up a timed feeder on the other side of the lease. I hung my trail cam about 15 feet from it to maybe get an idea of what's using the trail next to it and if there's enough "traffic" there to warrant hanging another stand over there. Of course, the feeder will be out of there before I hunt it, since that would be against the law to hunt near it.

My buddy took a couple of years of forestry and pointed out two small persimmon trees that I had never noticed before. Finding these two got us to looking closer and we did find one mature one along the edge of the woods that was bearing fruit this year. Deer love persimmons and will walk a good ways to feed on them. I picked out a good tree for a stand next year and cleared a few vines that were growing up into the persimmon. I'll fertilize it in a few more weeks and then again in the spring, hopefully increasing the fruit output next year. We found a few more in other places but they are all too small to produce fruit. I plan to clear away any competitive growth and fertilize these as well. It takes about 8-10 years for them to really produce fruit and a few of these are really close to being that old. Maybe the fertilizer will help to speed them up a year or so.

I did take my bow out and practice a little this afternoon. Gave everything the final once-over and put it back in the case, ready for Saturday. Man, I love this time of year! To me, this is better than Christmas.

Did I mention we trudged up and down hills all afternoon? Where's my ibuprofen?

We took the boat to the lake one last time yesterday. I added some fuel stabilizer and wanted to make sure it was in the system good. We rode around for a couple of hours and then brought her back home. I still have to winterize it and cover it up. But that can wait for a few more days. Or weeks.

I'm heading to my recliner for a while and then to bed. I hope you all had a good weekend.