Gleaton Chip Ranch Updates

[bgleaton]

Originally Posted by Truckman

Nice place! Thanks for sharing!

Here are some updated pictures from our place in late July.

[bgleaton]

Originally Posted by bgleaton

here are some updated pictures from our place in late july.
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[bgleaton]

We are seeing a lot of good 2yr olds this year. A lot of the young deer are looking a lot bigger than the younger deer in the past, since this is our 5th year feeding protein. Once these two year olds hit 6yrs, I'm assuming we will see a big jump then as well when comparing them to the mature bucks now.

[bgleaton]

Originally Posted by bgleaton

we are seeing a lot of good 2yr olds this year. A lot of the young deer are looking a lot bigger than the younger deer in the past, since this is our 5th year feeding protein. Once these two year olds hit 6yrs, i'm assuming we will see a big jump then as well when comparing them to the mature bucks now.

[686]

Beautiful place, and great pics! Looks like you're getting a lot more mass and additional points after a few years of good management. You've got some interesting genetics to work with. What are you planning to do for fall food plotting? Our place is west of Lampasas, and I'm looking to do some similiar things. Our pastures were in bad shape, very compacted soil from decades of grazing with no maintenance. I just got a moldboard plow and turned an acre or two this weekend with some success and am looking forward to seeing if we can get a food plot going. I need to disc the areas I turned and then seed, roll, and pray for rain.

[bgleaton]

Originally Posted by 686

Beautiful place, and great pics! Looks like you're getting a lot more mass and additional points after a few years of good management. You've got some interesting genetics to work with. What are you planning to do for fall food plotting? Our place is west of Lampasas, and I'm looking to do some similiar things. Our pastures were in bad shape, very compacted soil from decades of grazing with no maintenance. I just got a moldboard plow and turned an acre or two this weekend with some success and am looking forward to seeing if we can get a food plot going. I need to disc the areas I turned and then seed, roll, and pray for rain.

Thanks. We have definitely seen some improvements over the past 4 years due to the protein/cottonseed, but like I mentioned earlier, we are really starting to see some great 2-year olds, which is telling me that the best is yet to come. We are having a guy come out to our place to plant a 4-acre field with wheat, oats and turnips. We are only doing one fall food plot this year to see how it performs. If it does well, then we will add a couple more food plots the following year. We are trying to help the bucks through the rut and post rut so that once they get into the antler growing season, their bodies are in great shape and that all of the nutrients can go to their head gear.

The only problem I see is that we may have too many bucks on our property.

[686]

Probably a good call to have someone come out and plant for you. I have a very limited farming background and have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what/how to plant at our place, and then sourcing the equipment and doing the work.

[roadkill54]

Agree with Krivoman. Believe they are moving out once the groceries change. Hammer #2 from early in the thread. Just remember any traits you don't remove -- they will show up again in the future

[bgleaton]

I may try to purchase a Krivoman timed protein adapter, but I Would have never thought that the deer would prefer protein over corn that much.

[EastTexun]

Originally Posted by bgleaton

I may try to purchase a Krivoman timed protein adapter, but I Would have never thought that the deer would prefer protein over corn that much.

I specifically leave one protein feeder full (free choice) through October on our place because the bucks hang around it much better than corn. Especially when the rut is going I have watched a buck jump into the pen, walk under the corn feeder to the protein, eat protein for a couple minutes, hop out and keep running does.

[bgleaton]

We keep our 1,000lb all season trough filled all year and it's in the middle of our property. All of the other feeders are converted to corn around the end of August. We do not hunt the protein feeder.

[bgleaton]

Originally Posted by bgleaton

We keep our 1,000lb all season trough filled all year and it's in the middle of our property. All of the other feeders are converted to corn around the end of August. We do not hunt the protein feeder.

We are setting up our 3rd Krivoman feeder and filling up all of our corn feeders this weekend. One of the great things about these big Krivoman feeders is that when we fill them up with corn, they stay full for almost the entire season. This causes much less disturbance and stress on our deer herd. In the off-season, we convert them into protein feeders and they last almost 5 times as long as a 50gal barrel protein feeder. Mitch is the man!

We are also setting out alfalfa and rice bran this weekend to see how the deer take. They are starting to eat more and more this time of year to help bulk up for the rut. Our mentality is the more food we can offer, the better shape they will be in after the rut.

[bgleaton]

Well, we are getting ready for deer season. My dad, two brothers, and one of our buddy's filled all of our feeders up with corn and through out some alfalfa and rice bran. We are copying what BoneThug does by adding alfalfa and rice bran to our buffet, I just hope we can eventually grow some bucks like he is growing. We will continue to feed the alfalfa and rice bran along with our corn, cottonseed and protein throughout the year. We set up our 3rd Krivoman feeder, the 1,500lb corn/protein combo. Like I have said before, Krivoman makes great feeders and Mitch is a great guy. We are going to buy one of his 2,000lb feeders next year to replace our All-Season's 1,000lb trough and buy two of his timed protein units.

Middle (1,500lb Krivoman Feeder):


NW Corner (1,300lb Krivoman Feeder):


SE Corner (1,000lb Krivoman Feeder):


NE Corner:

We put two corn feeders here, one goes off in the AM and the other in the PM. We will be replacing these two with another 1,500lb Krivoman feeder next year.

NE Corner Bow Blind:


Protein Trough:


We set up a new bow blind at our protein trough because we have two really good bucks that always go to this feeder and none of the other feeders:



We did get 0.40in of rain last week, but things are drying up quickly out there since that was the only rain we got in August. We are supposed to have a really wet September. The Farmer's Almanac is predicting 3in above average, which would be great for when we plant our 4-acre fall food plot this year. I'll keep you posted on how the food plot goes and post more pictures of bucks when I get the memory cards.

I'll be driving out there next weekend to set up all of the pop up blinds and make sure all of the bow blinds are ready to rock. I have to install cattle panels or something around our pop-up blinds because last year cows destroyed my Double Bull blind. Has anyone protected their pop up blinds from cows. If so, what did you do?

[Bone Thug]

Very nice...Great looking setups. Keep the updates coming and good luck this season.

[bgleaton]

My brothers finished the cornhole boards

[bgleaton]

Here's the most recent picture of the big 10pt. We are gong to give him one more year.

[bgleaton]

[bgleaton]

Here are some more trail camera pictures:









Old 8pt:


2.5yr old 11pt:

[Fajkus7]

Great looking deer! I'm excited to see how y'all do come deer season. Good luck

[Abcdj]

Great looking place!

[Kurdawg]

Wow!

[hoythunter02]

Beautiful place and yall have done a whole lot of work. Very nice. Y'alls deer are healthy....protein does wonders.

[bgleaton]

Thanks! Protein has definitely helped a lot. We will continue to remove cedars every year to increase browse/forbs to help our deer herd. We still have a long way to go until we see the results we are looking for. We are just now starting to see the big improvements in our 1 and 2yr olds. I believe we will see a really big difference Once we hit that magic 7yr mark.

[hoythunter02]

Originally Posted by bgleaton

Thanks! Protein has definitely helped a lot. We will continue to remove cedars every year to increase browse/forbs to help our deer herd. We still have a long way to go until we see the results we are looking for. We are just now starting to see the big improvements in our 1 and 2yr olds. I believe we will see a really big difference Once we hit that magic 7yr mark.

That is a great thing about owning your own ranch, you have the ability to set forth the management practice you prefer and get every ounce of potential out of your deer. Those hill country senderos are nice I bet.

I drive through Richland Springs to get to our lease.....cool little town. I want us to own a place around the size of your ranch one of these years. We lease 2600 acres for now and it as awesome place with a great management plan.

[bgleaton]

We used to be on a 3,000 acre lease owned by the Gibbons family in Richland Springs, Tx. We were on that lease for almost 10 years. We shot some really good bucks out there. Some of our friends are still on that place and they shoot at least a couple 150"+ bucks a year out there. It wasn't always like that, but the biggest thing for us was to let those 140in 5 1/2yr olds go for one more year. It's very tough to do this, but that's how you get those 150-160" deer in the hill country.

[Trophydoehunter]

Beautiful place! Will be following close! We bought a place in San Saba about 7 years ago and are on the same mission!

[bgleaton]

I will be meeting with our neighbors on September 18th with a wildlife biologist and we are going to talk with them and find out what their goals are and see if we can help educate them on the deer we can grow. Who knows, they may have the same goals as we do, we just need to sit down and talk. Should be interesting.

[gingib]

Originally Posted by bgleaton

I will be meeting with our neighbors on September 18th with a wildlife biologist and we are going to talk with them and find out what their goals are and see if we can help educate them on the deer we can grow. Who knows, they may have the same goals as we do, we just need to sit down and talk. Should be interesting.

This is a huge step in the process and hopefully they are willing to listen

[bgleaton]

Well, I went out to our property and checked the cameras as well as set up two pop up blinds and finished our last gun blind. Just wanted to share some pictures of our work and how our deer are looking. We put out rice bran and alfalfa last week and the rice bran was basically gone and a lot of the alfalfa had been eaten as well.

Gun Blind:


Pop Up Blind:


Fork Horn Buck (7.5yrs):


8pt Cull (5.5yrs):


Old Cull (6.5yrs):


Nice 10pt (5.5yrs) - letting him go one more year:


Nice 8pt (4.5yrs):


8pt with Curled Main Beam - CULL (5.5yrs):


Young Bucks:


New Buck - He is a main frame 6 on one side and just a little spike on the other. He looks young, so we are going to let him walk and see what he does:

[RAGUIRREJR]

Nice pics

[bgleaton]

Here is that older 9pt:


Old 8pt with forked G2:


Nice Yearling (1.yr old) 8pt:

We have several yearlings this year with 5 or more points, but we still have a few spike yearlings.

[Krivoman]

Nice stuff. Really looking good

[Bone Thug]

Nice group of bucks. Looking good!!!

[bgleaton]

Here are a couple of older bucks that we are after this year:



Here are a couple of cull bucks that we are trying to get rid of:





We are trying to get rid of some of these older bucks with less potential to help improve the 5.5yrs and younger bucks. Also, some of these bucks above are real food hogs, so it will also help the younger bucks get to the protein easier.

[Txdeerhunter243]

You have some great looking bucks and a great looking property!

[breederbuck33]

The character some of your deer have is unreal! nice deer

[tbgascorer]

Unique genetics there and good mix of mature animals.

[bgleaton]

Thanks. Some of the genetics are cool and others are not so cool. We have a ton of bucks, so we are trying to get the numbers down a little bit to help our young ones get bigger.

[ontarget]

I hear ya, we have some of those genetics at our place in Menard with either 1 horn on one side and 4 on the other, and we have seen a split main beam on a few of them.

[ontarget]

Nothing near as big as most of yours! Protein protein protein next year.

[bgleaton]

My dad and I were able to put up one last gun blind before the season. This is our second deer blind built with SmartSide siding. This stuff lasts forever.

[bgleaton]

A couple of my friends and I made it out to the ranch this past weekend to do some bow hunting, boy was it hot. I was able to shoot one of our cull bucks on Sunday morning. He had a huge body on him. This is a buck we have seen for 3 years now and his antlers have been pretty much the same, so it was time for him to go.

We also filled up the three cottonseed feeders, topped off our 1,000lbs protein trough (keeping it filled year-round to keep bucks near the center of our property) and dumped 200lbs of rice bran and 100lbs of cottonseed meal for the deer as well.

Here are a couple of pictures of two bucks we are passing on this year:

[BrandonA]

Yall have some amazing bucks for Menard Cnty

[Txdeerhunter243]

That is one cool looking buck! Congrats on the kill!

[MenardCountyBow]

Im wanting to buy land in menard cty. What was the hunting like on your ranch before you guys started managing? Buck size/Deer numbers?

Thanks,

[bgleaton]

Thanks! I'm sure we will continue to see improvements over the next couple of years, especially once we hit our 8th year of feeding protein. Next year will be the start of our 5th year feeding protein and we are just now starting to see some really good 2.5 and 3.5 year olds. We have an 11-point 2.5yr old and several 10pt 3.5yr olds, so if we can continue feeding protein, cottonseed, alfalfa, corn, rice bran and other supplements along with doing some brush management - clearing strips of cedars every year to improve forb/browse production, I think we will eventually start seeing some bucks in the high 140's/low 150's. Our neighbor to the west of us has a high fence and he hasn't brought in any breeder deer, just native deer that he feeds protein and does continuous brush management and he shot a buck a couple years ago that scored 172in, so I know the genetics are out there. It definitely doesn't happen over night.

[Mexico]

Really nice buck...beautiful place.

[MenardCountyBow]

How dense is the deer population in general? If its thick how does that play into your specific plan that you have going on your place?

[bgleaton]

Originally Posted by BosqueCountybow

Im wanting to buy land in menard cty. What was the hunting like on your ranch before you guys started managing? Buck size/Deer numbers?

Thanks,

We bought our place in 2011 after the terrible drought and the biggest buck we saw was a 10pt that probably scored 115-120in. Now, we have a couple of bucks in the 140's and several other really cool bucks that would score over 125in that I want some of my friends to shoot. There were quite a bit of deer there at that time we bought it and still are quite a bit of deer, but we are getting our numbers in check.

[bgleaton]

Originally Posted by BosqueCountybow

How dense is the deer population in general? If its thick how does that play into your specific plan that you have going on your place?

We work with a wildlife biologist and we estimated that we have around 1 deer/8 acres. The reason it's this high is because we feed a lot - we have fed almost 20,000lbs of protein this year so far. The biologist estimated for us to shoot 4 bucks this year and he initially said 4 does, but since we are seeing around a 150% fawn crop this year, he recommended we shoot 6 does. We will not be shooting 4 trophy bucks, in fact we are going after 3 bucks that are 6.5yrs and older that just don't have the antlers we would like them to have at their age.