Gleaton Chip Ranch Updates

[gingib]

man this is a dream of mine!!!

[bgleaton]

12/7/2019 Update

Here are some pictures from last weekend:

We set up some snares on our fence line where the dogs have been digging.






Here is a picture of the 8pt my buddy shot this past weekend. He dressed out at 120lbs, which was lighter than I expected. We had him aged at 6.5/7.5yrs:

Here are pictures of him from 2016, 2017, & 2018.


Pretty 9 pointer doing well.




We saw this 12pt in person this past weekend and he is really impressive.


My new goal is to try and clear cedars around 3 to 5 oak trees each weekend I'm out there to try to help improve the oaks and allow a little more sunlight and rain to get into the soil. I'm hoping that will help.


My dad is meeting with the burn manager on Monday and will let you know what he recommends for our property.

[Puncher51]

Are y’all pulling that slash far enough away from the oaks? If not they’ll burn up during the burn

[bgleaton]

I don’t think they will be burning in this area as it’s super thick in cedar. Not much grass to carry a fire in this area. That’s a good idea to pull the slash away from the tree further though for future burns.

[Puncher51]

I don’t think they will be burning in this area as it’s super thick in cedar. Not much grass to carry a fire in this area. That’s a good idea to pull the slash away from the tree further though for future burns.

Awesome! Just double checking. We’ve learned a lot through trial and error. I just didn’t want you to burn up what you were trying to save. From our experience it’s best to pull any slash at least 50+ foot away, and if you have a big pile then it’s best to go further. Flame lengths easily get 10’ on a dried cedar and they put off a lot of heat. Even if the flames don’t consume the leaves the heat is usually enough to brown out the oak limbs closest to the heat.

[gingib]

man that 9 and 12 will be studs in 2-3 years.

[bgleaton]

Prescribed Burn Plan & Brush Management for 2020

We met with the burn manager this week and should be getting a burn plan but here are the areas he recommended we burn in February:

We will be burning around 40% of the property.

The burn manager asked us to move a couple of brush piles away from some cedar thickets so while we have the dozer out there we are going to have them clear all of the cedars in this 5 acre area.

There are a bunch of live oak trees in this area (see red circles) and hope that the habitat in this area will improve after removing the cedars. We will probably broadcast a native perennial blend from Turner Seed to get some good forbs and grasses growing in the Spring. We are hoping to clear around 5 to 10 acres of cedar per year in certain areas to improve the productivity of our property.

[Tide]

Have you considered mulching/shredding any of these areas?
Not sure what your dozer guy is charging but the additional cost of a shredder was 100% worth it for our needs.
Believe our dozer guy was $165/hour versus $225/hour for the shredder. Shredder left it looking like a park while the dozer had a ton of leftover work to do.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[bgleaton]

Yes, we have used a mulcher/chipper and it worked great, especially in certain areas around oak trees. It's amazing the results we got from the cedar mulching machine - grasses came back quickly. We are going to have the same guy come out again some time but since we have to move brush piles with a dozer we wanted to find some other work for him to do since the dozer will already be out there.

[bgleaton]

1/17/20 Update

We met with the burn manager and he recommends that we hold off one more year to increase our fuel load to get a good burn. Our goal for 2020 is to get a dozer in and remove around 7 to 10 acres of cedars in certain areas and then broadcast native grasses/forbs in these areas. Here are the two areas we are going to clear. The red circles are live oaks. We are going to have the dozer clear ONLY cedars and we will hand cut the cedars around the live oaks and then lay those dead cedars that we hand cut throughout these clearings to act as grazing enclosures to help protect seedlings from being grazed.



We filled all of our cottonseed and protein feeders this past weekend and it looks like we got around 0.35in of rain yesterday and possibly another 0.5 of rain today...fingers crossed.



We finally got around to planting some landscaping in front of the house and planted two Mexican white oaks in front of the house:


Here is a graph that shows the past couple of years protein and cottonseed feeding amounts per month. Starting 2020 off strong! I'm curious to see how this looks after a full year of being high fenced and whether or not we will see any big differences.

[PROD49]

We met with the burn manager and he recommends that we hold off one more year to increase our fuel load to get a good burn. Our goal for 2020 is to get a dozer in and remove around 7 to 10 acres of cedars in certain areas and then broadcast native grasses/forbs in these areas. Here are the two areas we are going to clear. The red circles are live oaks. We are going to have the dozer clear ONLY cedars and we will hand cut the cedars around the live oaks and then lay those dead cedars that we hand cut throughout these clearings to act as grazing enclosures to help protect seedlings from being grazed.
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We filled all of our cottonseed and protein feeders this past weekend and it looks like we got around 0.35in of rain yesterday and possibly another 0.5 of rain today...fingers crossed.

[ATTACH]988293[/ATTACH]

We finally got around to planting some landscaping in front of the house and planted two Mexican white oaks in front of the house:
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Here is a graph that shows the past couple of years protein and cottonseed feeding amounts per month. Starting 2020 off strong! I'm curious to see how this looks after a full year of being high fenced and whether or not we will see any big differences.
[ATTACH]988298[/ATTACH]

Love the graph. Did you just create your own pivot or is it a software program?

[bgleaton]

I keep all of our feeding records in excel and populate the graph from it.

[bgleaton]

We will be paying even closer attention to our feed consumption and comparing it to the past 5 years of data. It will be interesting to see if our feed consumption increases or stays about the same since high fencing our place. I would assume that it will stay around the same or maybe increase slightly since we have hammered the whitetail but we will be doing a lot of habitat work (i.e. cedar removal) so hopefully that will help in reducing consumption.

Planning on shooting 2-3 blackbuck doe next trip bc they are reproducing like crazy. We are hoping to keep around 2 males and 4 or 5 females.

[yotethumper]

2-3 blackbuck doe next trip bc they are reproducing like crazy. We are hoping to keep around 2 males and 4 or 5 females.

I know NOTHING about high fences or exotics. But with only two males will you have enough genetic diversity to prevent inner breeding? Just curious.

Really like the feed graph, I will have to start doing that.

[bgleaton]

Not sure about that. We were told for our acreage to put two bucks and to try to keep around 4 or 5 females.