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2014 hunting report

The weather has turned colder but the hunting is as hot as ever around here. 

Pheasant season opened the third weekend in October as always.  The Wisconsin "Poachers" made their annual trip west to hunt here for the first five days of the season.  They had enough to shoot at, but with all the corn yet to be harvested and pleasant weather, there were not large numbers of birds in the food plots.

Tom Quinn, et al came for the first weekend of November and did quite well…as a group anyway.  One member of the group, who shall remain nameless, had a rough go of things.  But with the constant nagging and harassing strong support and encouragement of his peers, he plans to come out with the guys again in December to "face his demons."  That's what friends are for, especially hunting buddies.  They can really remind you of how far you've come.  Or not let you forget how bad you were, but I like to see the glass as half-full.

Rob Sundy met up with three of his old friends for a very successful four-day hunt.  Despite some brutally cold winchills, these men limited every day.  By the time they came, the corn was virtally all out of the fields and with the cold weather, the birds were holed up in the heavy cover and food plots.  It made for some explosive hunting opportunities when they got into the birds.

We've got some Missourians here this Thanksgiving week.  Yesterday they came up a few short, but today they were just one off their limit.  It's their first time here so there's some learning to do on where, when, and how to hunt our property.  They seem to be doing well.

Rifle deer season opened last weekend and goes through next weekend.  There have been some nice bucks taken in the area.  Archery has been open since late September.  We have much of the ranch enrolled in public walk-in area, so we often don't get to see the deer that are taken on our place.

I've uploaded some new photos in the hunting album, so be sure to check it out!

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Award videos are up!

2014 has been a big year for us, both personally and professionally.  We were awarded the Leopold Conservation Award for South Dakota and the Environmental Stewardship Award for Region 7.  Both have released short videos about our ranch and the things we have done to take care of the land.  You can view them below.


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Our fleet of tanks is expanding…

…water tanks, that is.

We are realizing that the limiting factor for us in our grazing management continues to be water.  We can't change how much falls from the sky (even though we do have influence over how much soaks in – see our Water Management page), but we do have the ability to distribute drinking water for the cattle.  We decided to try some alternatives to the big tire tanks that we usually install.  Those are wonderful watering arrangements in most situations, but we wanted to try something a little less permanent and with a little quicker setup time. 

The two rectangular fiberglass tanks are made by Montana Fiberglass.  They each hold about 1165 gallons.  The tanks are situated on a temporary crossfence.  The yellow plastic handles on either end of the guardrail anchor the fence.  A strand of insulated wire connects the two fences to carry power from one side to the other.

The tanks are fed from a well about 1.5 miles away.  We had an existing water line (1.5" PVC six feet deep) buried in the area, so we tapped into it for this setup. The 450 feet between the buried line and the tanks is 1.25" HDPE rated at 160 PSI laying on top of the ground.  An Apex XtraFlo valve is installed in each tank.  They are a cost-effective valve that requires only 1.5" drop in water level to acheive full-flow.  This is intended to be used only for summer use.  The above-ground water line and exposed tank valves would not do well with our South Dakota winters.

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We used guard rail to keep the livestock from crawling into the tank.  Angle iron brackets attached the end pieces to the side pieces.  There is room for animals to drink on all four sides.

The 1.25" HDPE pipe is seen coming into the tanks here.  Also, you can see the black insulated wire running along the guardrail.  This carries the power across the tank for the electric fence tied on to each side.  I did it this way to protect the water from being energized in the event of a break in the fence.

 

Here's another setup I did for our yearlings.  It's a smaller herd, thus the size of tank is much smaller.  This handles 110 head of yearlings easily with the 5 gallons per minute delivered by our rural water service.

The 9' Sioux poly tank holds about 950 gallons.  It is fed by about 1400 ft connected to our rural water system by 1.5" HDPE rated at 200PSI.  I have a little more work to do here.  I plan to install two 90 degree elbows next to the tank so it is not just hanging in the air as it is now.

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This tank is also regulated by an Apex XtraFlo valve.  However, this is a top-fill setup.  The brass rod I used did not come with the valve, but it works.  Another metal clamp like the one shown here attaches the pipe to the post as the pipe comes over the edge of the tank.

 

There's already been modifications to each of these arrangements, and there's sure to be more as we work out the kinks.  It's fun implementing some "rancher engineering" on these projects.  About the time we get this right, we'll probably hatch a new idea that might work even better.

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Update: Both of these setups worked well.  The yellow poly tank was used to water 110 yearlings with no problems.  The twin fiberglass tanks watered 240 cow/calf pairs, but we did have some issues with an elbow fitting coming loose.  Once that was resolved, it worked well.  The lesson we learned was to make sure you have snug-fitting components.  I usually have to use a small propane torch to heat up the pipe so it has enough stretch for the barbed end of the fitting to be inserted.  If I don't need the torch, then it's likely that the fitting will leak or come apart all together.