Whoohoo a post just in time for summer! It should be epic considering the time between posts but it’s snot. Yes, I said “snot”.

This is the second version of the beer. Two summers ago I made this beer with pretty much the same grain bill and hops but fermented it with American ale yeast. It was a good beer but was missing a bit of twang that I enjoy in my wheat beers. This time I fermented it with an American hefeweizen strain of yeast and I think that I like this version better. This version has some spice and tartness going on that seem to mesh well with the light malty body. Definitely a beer made for a hot summer afternoon….or cool summer afternoon…..or just an afternoon…….aww heck look at it, it’s good whenever.

As of the 15th of this month (March) Ronnie has turned eight months old. I’ll keep the proud parent banter to a minimum, as I understand how annoying that can get, but I will say that he is now crawling around and beginning to get into stuff. Me thinks that this is only a taste of all the trouble that is yet to come.

These are a couple of pics I took of him the other night as he hung out with me for a little bit while mom got some stuff done around the house. They’re both cute pics but the second is my favorite because he looks like he’s “steppin’ up” to the cat.

Edit: The pics are a little noisey and need to be post processed so excuse the shotty quality

Joey and Art eat your heart out, the first shed find of the year goes to this guy!

To be honest I wasn’t even looking for sheds yesterday but rather timber cruising the property picking up wood that my dad had cut over the years and then forgot about like a squirrel burying acorns. As I was pulling up the driveway with the last load something in the field caught my eye. At first I thought it was just a stick that fell off the truck as we were hauling wood but as I got closer and the angled changed I could tell that it was some deer headgear. By the way it was sticking in the ground I’ve probably been driving past it for the last week or so and never even noticed it even though it was only about 20 yards off the driveway. Meh, oh well. All that matters is that I stumbled across it.

Here is a better shot of the shed and as you can see it is a decent size shed from a 1 1/2 year old deer, my guesstimate. What tickles me more than finding the shed is that the deer made it through deer season and will hopefully make it to next season. I like to think that we played a small part in that success.

Today the temps got up into the 20’s -which is balmy compared to the weather lately- so I decided to get out and do a little off-season deer scouting.  This was the first time I’ve made it out into the woods to do something other than cut wood since we moved in and man did it feel good. I really like scouting this time of year because it’s easy to spot the sign and there aren’t any stinging nettles or skeeters, for some reason I’m a magnet for both and by the time I get out of the woods in the summer I look like Quasi Moto. Well enough jibber jabber let’s get into the meat of the post.

One of the first places I headed to was one of the winter carryover foodplots that is actually located right in front of the house. Before I even made it to the foodplot I noticed a melted spot in the snow that looked like a deer bed but dismissed the idea because it was so close to the house. I was wrong and it was a deer bed and there was another five or six with it. So much for the deer being afraid of the house JOEY!

This is pic of my original destination. It’s a food plot that we planted with brassicas intended for winter carry over. As you can see the deer have definitely been using it because it looks like a herd of wild pigs rooted through it.

Next I made my way into the swamp where I found this buck rub from earlier this fall. I threw the lens cap up in the rub for size reference because it was a pretty good size tree. Now I know that even a small buck will rub on a large tree but I believe this rub to have been made by a larger deer. The reason I think this is because of the spacing on the main rub lines looks like it was done by two different tines on the same beam.

To finish off the walk I circled around through the north end of the woods and made my way up to the house. On the way I checked on the food plot behind the house that was planted with a brassica/clover blend. As you can see it was rooted up like the other plot. Many times the deer will hit the plot in the evening as they make their way out into the field behind the house. So much for the deer avoiding the house JOEY!

Overall it was a good walk and I learned a few things about the way the deer use our property. One of the biggest surprises was how close the deer get to the house even with all the woodcutting/gathering going on.

Pretty much the posts of late have been about the wild life viewing out the back of our home and this one expands on that even further. This is a video from a few days ago where I happened to have the camcorder handy as the deer were making their way out into the field……….from right behind the house! Yeah Joe, they’re rrrrrrrrrrrrrreally afraid of the house.

Check out the video: The Deer Yard

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One of the coolest features of our new house has nothing to do with the construction but rather the houses location. Since our house is so far off the road and is located in a field the wildlife viewing opportunities are endless. In the morning when I’m headed out for work it’s not uncommon for their to be deer out in the field or around the house. During the day you can pretty much count on their always being turkeys out in the field. At various points of the day you will also see squirrels digging through the snow going after the soys. In the evening just as the turkeys are heading for their roost the deer will begin to make their way into the fields. And last but not least, one mid Saturday morning Sam and I watched two coyotes out in the field.  I especially enjoyed that sighting because up until this deer season coyote sightings have been extremely rare especially when Matt and I are on the prowl for them.

I snapped the picture in this post a few nights ago as the deer were making their way across the area where our backyard is going to be.

Last night I just happened to be sitting on the couch and noticed some deer entering the field from right behind our house and figured that it would make a nice background for the site so I fired off a few pics. Not only is the picture more season appropriate but it also features a two year old buck (by my estimate). The other buck in the pic is probably only a yearling but still encouraging to see none-the-less. Below you’ll see some 100% crops of the pics I took featuring some of the survivors from the firearm season. Me thinks that next hunting season is going to be even better than this one!

If you’re not seeing the site background you may need to hit refresh a few times.

Along with not updating the site I have also neglected to update the software that runs the site so today I have upgraded the site to WordPress 2.7 which has some sweet features on the backend and nothing on the frontend for those of you reading this.

The long of the short is there are going to be errors and things that just plain don’t work but hopefully I will clear them up in the next couple days.

And for the love of god I need to change the site background to something more seasonally appropriate.

Cheers!

It’s the day that was always in the back of my mind but seemed like it was decade away. That day that I’m talking about is moving into to our house! Last Friday the house passed final inspection and we were granted temporary occupancy (don’t ask it will just make me angry).  I spent the whole weekend hauling all our stuff to the house and I’m still not done. It’s been said many times by many people but you really don’t know how much stuff you own until you have to move it. I’m hoping this is the last time I have to move because man-o-man does it suck to high heaven. On a positive note, with us moving in I should be getting an internet connection for the first time since August. I know many of you have registered on here so you can see pictures of Mr. Chunky Butt and now I’ll be able to get those put up.

Kind of a lame post for being gone for over a month but if you factor in how little time I have and the lack of an internet connection you’ll see that this post is epic…………..errrr not-so-much but it’s better than nothing.

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Let’s get this post started with an update on our new house construction. Construction continues but at this point it we’re moving about as a turtle going uphill. We’ve finished the painting and are now finished with staining all the trim (’cept all the windows). Let the record show that I don’t believe staining to be nearly as bad as painting. When you’re staining you’re moving much faster and not having to go over the same spot multiple times.

Hunting is going good…………….for those that are actually going. I’m so busy with the house that I haven’t been out since the beginning of the season. I’m hoping to get out a few times before the exploding pumpkin army takes over on November 15 (firearm deer season if you didn’t catch that). OH almost forgot, this week we found out a stand was stolen. This means people are still trespassing and helping themselves freely to equipment that is not theirs. To leave on a bright note the food plots are looking hella sweet considering the late start we got on them.

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I decided that it was time to swap out the site background picture with something that was a little more season appropriate. The other pic wasn’t bad or anything, it was just more summer-y. The new site background picture is a recent shot I took overlooking the decking on the backside of our house. It does a good job of showing off the view and the beginning fall colors. In the background you can see the beans have turned and the trees are following along behind them. A decent enough picture to serve as a background for a not-so-decent website such as this. You know, another good thing about the pic is that it doesn’t feature my denty Danger Ranger.

Along with the new site background I’ve also added the ability to directly view the site background pic. It seemed only natural to put up a link to do so because trying to see the entire background pic while looking through the content on the site is like being at a 25¢ peep show. Well we can’t have that on a nice family oriented site like mine so you’ll find the link underneath the random pictures area above. Enjoy.

This past weekend my parents and I finished up painting the critical part of our house (garage still needs to be done). You can see a picture of our handy work off to the left there. While it’s nice to see the inside painted I have to say that painting ranks right up there with roofing on the “List of Things That Suck While Building a House”. Almost every night last week I would get out of work and head over to the house where we’d paint until, in my dad’s words, “we couldn’t see straight”. We’d then get up the next morning rinse and repeat. Well the important thing is that it’s over and doesn’t look half bad.

I know, I know, it’s not that exciting but you can check out more pics of the painting here.

Hunting season is officially here and I noticed that many people are coming here to check out the “Trespasser Cam Project” category. I figured I would throw up (that didn’t come out right) a status update of what I’ve deployed on my own property to try and catch those who trespass. At this point in time I’ve found the best route to go is with a homebrew trailcam. These cams can be made cheap-as-hell and are also much smaller than the commercial versions. Their small size makes them very easy to hide which was my top priority for this project. I know I was hoping to put something together that stored the pictures wirelessly but this is the best solution I could come up with at the moment for the time being.

With all that being said I am still keeping my eyes and brain open to a wireless solution. Maybe a SBC coupled with a 900mhz transmitter, I dunno. But rest assured if/when I figure out a better solution it will get posted up on my site.

Hopefully that helps some of you guys showing up on my site.

This past weekend I ended up getting some sort of bug that made my body feel like a 25 year old tackling dummy but I still managed to get out Friday and Sunday night. Just thought I’d give myself some props.

Friday night was pretty much a repeat of opening night and I ended up seeing 15-20 deer. Don’t give me no crap about the loose numbers because it gets hard to keep track when you lose sight of them and all the does look alike. Of the deer I saw five were bucks and one was even 2 1/2! It felt so good to see a buck that wasn’t a yearling that I almost did the “fist pump” that the cornballs on the Outdoor Channel always do after taking a nice deer………almost.

After seeing so many deer on opening night and Friday night I decided it was time to get serious about shooting some does soooooooooooooo I drove over to the house and setup my popup blind 50 yards away. -LOL- Now before you nominate me for laziest bowhunter in Eaton county award let me defend myself by pointing out that most of the deer I glassed over the two previous hunts ended up over there feeding on forbes (non-woody plants). It was kind of weird hunting within sight of the house but then again it was weird to be seeing deer there when there was a perfectly good beanfield right next to the house. At the end of the night I ended up seeing five bucks. Three of those bucks were closer to the house than I was, way closer, like 20 yards! If it didn’t feel completely wrong I would be smart to just set the pop-up blind right on the side of the garage.

My hunting is now done for a good week while we get the house painted so hopefully those three bucks I disturbed while loading my truck will get back into their routine of showing up in my future yard. What a weird, freaky awesome year it has been.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea let me first say that I did no get a deer. I have never taken a deer on the archery opener and for the most part have just had down right bad luck so it isn’t that hard to be the best given my record.

This years opening day opened up with the threat of rain and wind but still Joe and I headed out because darn-it-all it’s tradition. We drove over to the property and parked next to our new house (this will be important in a minute). As I was getting ready next to my truck I immediately noticed that I hadn’t forgotten any vital pieces of equipment which is a huge change from years past. Most of the time I forget a flashlight, my binoculars, and even my release. After we equip ourselves we start off for our spots and get no farther than 30 yards from the house and we run into two deer. So much for the construction scaring the deer away from the area and making it a perfect entrance for hunting. After those deer bound off deeper into the bean field we continued on down the field line for another 20 yards give or take a midget step. At this point we run into another deer that was just inside the field line which promptly busts us and snorts just to add insult to injury. That was the last deer to be part of our morning herding and we ended up making it to our stands without bumping into any more deer. The rest of the morning was uneventful and mostly consisted of me sending Joey text messages describing the obnoxious odors inside my pop-up blind that were a direct consequence of me eating chile for the two preceding days. I’m thinking of turning it into an opening day tradition. Before the morning hunt ended we ended up seeing one more deer, a doe that was feeding in the corner. Joey also ended up catching a glimpse of a couple deer making their way through the third field. We then hit up the Eaton Place to do some eatin’ because darn-it-all it’s tradition.

For the evening hunt I decided to setup in the field line between the second and third fields so that I could see the entire field line. I wanted to use the evening hunt as an opportunity to learn more about the deer movements and to also help us find a good location for our last treestand. I ended up setting my pop-up blind about half way down the tree line in a spot that allowed me to see the entire tree line and also see some of the corner of the second field. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this idea was in fact a good idea because at 5:30 I had seven does step out of the woods and start feeding in the field. Not fifteen minutes after that I had four more deer show up and then four more. It is at this point I stopped counting because I was spending so much time with my eyeballs glued to the binoculars checking out the deer jamborree that was going on in front of me. Out of all the deer only four were bucks and they were all four points except one which was a spike with antlers that looked like devil horns…….weird. Anywho the weird thing was one of the four points was noticeably bigger than the others and had beams (yep beams) that came out just short of his ears. Either my $40 binoculars weren’t picking up some tines or he knocked them off or he’s the biggest four point in Eaton county. The rest of the evening I spent watching deer mosey around like grazing cattle and even witnessed two of the bucks fighting.

All-in-all my best opener ever. Makes me want to seriously consider making the chile an annual tradition.

I’m very please to announce that our future home now has siding. Now I don’t want to sound cocky or anything but I think technically that means our house is one step above the building on the corner that the church as been constructing for like three years, that one only has half of its siding. Whoohoo, a step up in society.

In addition the siding being up all the outside doors have been hung so the house is pretty much buttoned up except for the garage door which will be going in here in the next few weeks. On the inside the drywall has been hung and mudded. I can’t believe they call it “mudded”. Every time I say it I think it sounds like a flat tire of a word that some hilljack mumbled on some job site in Appalachia.

All is going well so far, minus the basement turning into a worthy swimming hole, and I believe everything is on track and we should be all set to move in by the first of the new year.

Last hunting season there was some concern amongst a few of my family members that there weren’t enough deer on the property to warrant a doe harvest. Their argument was that we weren’t seeing enough deer. I too shared some of this concern but wanted to take a more scientific approach to be sure.

Earlier this spring I attended the Quality Deer Management Association’s Deer Steward Level I course down in Indiana. One of the topics covered during the course was different methods of population surveys. Out of all the methods presented the one with the most accurate results was the one utilizing trail cameras. Since I already have a couple of homebrews that I made it seemed like a good way to put them to use. The trail cameras were placed on August 15th and removed on August 31st. Supposedly you can get away with less time but I wanted them to stay out for the full duration just to make sure that we got an accurate count as possible.

The results of the survey were a bit surprising to me and so surprising to my family that they immediately wrote them off like I was trying to sell them a moon landing conspiracy.

There is the old saying that “a picture is worth 1000 words” so off I went with my 100,000 words to tabulate the results of a more scientific approach to our deer management. In total there were 12 unique bucks identified during the course of the survey and 29 does. This puts our buck to doe ratio at 1:2.41 which is on the high side both population-wise and ratio-wise. Two points of concern for the bucks was the lack of age structure and the antler mass. Out of all the bucks captured on camera only two were aged at being older than 1 1/2 years of age. This could mean that we have very few bucks making it through Michigan’s November Pumpkin Army or the amount of human activity involved with this survey kept them away from the camera. Personally I hope that it is the latter. The antler mass is of some concern to us too because pretty much every deer showed very little in the way of it. I’m no biologist but short of the freak July hail storm this was a pretty good year for plant growth with all the rain. You can see one example of what we were seeing in the picture off to the right. We aren’t “antler worshippers” but rather we enjoy seeing big healthy bucks like any hunter and since there are only three components of antler growth (age, genetics, nutrition) you have to wonder if it is just age or if maybe there is a nutrition problem, maybe due to a high population.

The trail camera survey has definitely given me a deeper view into the deer management on our property and will directly influence our doe harvest. If the survey hadn’t been conducted this season would have been another minimal doe harvest which is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing.

Welcome to the new and not-really-improved SirRonald.com. I figured since the content isn’t being updated very often the least I could do was do a little spit shining on the site. My favorite part about the new look is the background picture that is about the size of Texas. As time goes on I’ll swap the picture out for whatever floats my boat at the moment. With the new look comes a variety of UI (user interface) problems that I will slowly work through so bear with me.

As you can see updates are few and far between on the site and it’s because Alltel Jacked My Home Internet. Kind of ironic that the company with the commercials advertising their family friendliness with the cheeky Chad drops my account at the drop of a hat. But enough bitterness and on with the show.

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I’m happy to report that the house is rolling along quite nicely but my sanity is still in question. Last week they ended up getting most of the siding done and the mudding done for the drywall. This week they should be finishing both of those out. My sanity is still in question because of having to deal with the garage door, interior doors, interior paint & stain, the septic & drainfield, boiler system, and dealing with a driveway that’s about as solid as chocolate pudding (I’m a bit hungry at the moment of writing this). In the end I remind myself that it will all be worth it because I’ll have an internet connection and the ability to whiz in my backyard without offending the neighbors.

Well that about does it for September. From here on out I’m going to try like heck to add things more often now that I can just take my laptop with me when I head over to my parents house.

We’ve completed one of the first sweat equity projects for our new house, putting a roof on. It was hard, it was hot, and man did I hate it but in the end it was worth after stepping back and taking a look at it. Everything went well except for my fear of heights which had my “pucker facter” off the charts for the first couple hours.

While we are at it here are a couple random photos of the house construction:

Here is a close-up of the house.

The view from the living room. There will be two double hungs on either side of a picture window so I can get a firearm out them.

More pics to come…

…..to the internet we will go. Bah, it will make more sense when I do a bit of ’splaining.

Pardon the lack of updates on the site but Alltel informed us that they will no longer allow us to use their internet services. The reason they gave was that we were outside of their “service area”. Unless their service area is less than a couple miles (doubtful) I think what they’re really thinking is “holy moses that guy uses a lot of bandwidth, make the bleeding stop!”. Soooooooo at this point I have no internet at home. Booooo!

But that will all change when we get moved into our house! What you’re looking at in the back of my truck is one end of a 1.3 mile wireless bridge that goes over I-69, through a couple fields, and to my parents barn. Inside that barn sits the other end of the wireless bridge and my future access to the internet. How’s that for a slice of fried gold? If you haven’t caught on by now let me break it down for you. Our new homes network is going to be wirelessly bridged with my parents in order to use their broadband internet connection.

Now how fast is this wireless bridge? Well, just throwing the antenna in the back of the truck and pointing it barn-ward bound yielded 3.5Megabit full-duplex with only 2ms of delay. Xbox Live and Netflix Watchnow here I come!

This past Saturday we finally got rolling on our food plots for the year. Saturday morning I rolled into the local co-op and bought all the seed and fertilizer and $200 later I had this pickup full of food plot love. The plan was to get all five plots sprayed and planted by the end of the day but due to time and Joey’s Hellen Keller-esque spraying on the fifth plot made that quite impossible. It was still a good day though because we now have four out of the five plots planted. We didn’t end up getting out of there until 7:30pm……..yeah I said PM. The next person that tries to compare a pile of corn to 8 1/2 hours of work on food plots is going to get chased with my new chainsaw.

What did we end up planting? Wouldn’t youuuuuuuuuuuuuu like to know. Eh, mebbes I post it up, mebbes not.

While we’re on the topic of food plots let’s talk about corn screens. This year we are trying them out to see if it helps the deer feel more secure in the plots. Most of corn screens we planted were wiped out by that freaky July hail storm but one section hung in there and gave it what for. As you can see the planter did it’s job and the corn up like living wall. The proof is in the pudding with this because I was standing out at the build site last night with the builder when a doe walked behind the corn and stepped into the bean field before we even saw her or her seeing us.

I’m looking forward to see the plots comes up and getting down to the hunting portion of the year. It’ll also be interesting to see the effects of the corn screens. Maybe they’ll be a corn planter for sale next year or maybe the SirRonald.com logo will be changed a romantic shot of me hugging that big piece of green metal.

As we stepped into the muddy water Matt asked me if the reason I wanted to come here was because we hadn’t gotten into any pike this year and the answer was a most definite Y E S. The fish must have been listening to our conversation because as the day progressed I hooked pike after pike and Matt hooked bass after bass. In the pic, stage left, you can see the biggest pike of the day held by yours truly. He’s not all that big but later on that night I hooked into one that felt like a cinderblock. He ended up peeeeeeeling some line and then taking my lure upstream towards Charlotte. And that right there is as close as I am going to get to revealing where we were fishing.

Now I’m not going to reveal where we were fishing but I will say that the stretch we fished is in serious need of some cleanup. At one point Matt hooked the smallest pike of the evening and me………..well I hooked a fold-up chair. Don’t believe me? A picture is worth a thousand words.

At the end of the evening the fish totals were Matt coming in with 9 and yours truly coming with 11. Most of mine being pike and most of Matt’s being bass. Yep, beat Matt in his own backyard.

You can check out the rest of the pics you’ll find them here. *Warning Matt can’t keep his shirt on while fishing so be prepared for topless white male action*