Mid April at Long Ridge, a busy time!

Happy Spring to everyone from Long Ridge Deer Camp! We have finally lost all our snow, even up on the Far Ridge, and the last of the lake and small pond ice disappeared a week ago. Once that happens things get really busy around the camp.

The first chore is to get a game cam out. I know for you lucky folks in the Southern tiers, you can leave them out all year around, but with our temps going below zero, batteries last only a few days, so I bring them in til spring. Up it goes during the first week of April. Below you see the first buck captured in a photo this year. He is in excellent condition, and shiney and alert. The mild winter was good on this group for sure. We'll be watching antler growth over the spring and summer months!

The second pressing issue is to get all the trails opened up and cleared of blowdowns, ice damaged trees (and there were a ton of them) and to clear some new trails. Below is one that I am clearing along the Eastern edge of the property, where there are no trails yet

Here I have cut my way along, and have yet to walk back to clear debri from the trail. Some folks have asked me if I always travel by ATV, and never walk! Well I do walk, with a pistol, or rifle, and binoculars. But when traveling with a chainsaw, hand tools, gas, and oil, I ALWAYS take transportation!

While walking along heaving brush and cut trees out of the new trail system, I discovered a bear den, kind of exciting because I have never found one right on our land. This one is very well used and there are black coarse hairs on the sticks around the cave. The trail in and out is well worn. I don't know if there are babes in there, but there could be. The sow I caught on camera this past summer had two yearlings with her, so it would be her breeding year. But there is no way to even know if it is her. The opening is about 24x30 inches, just perfect. I didn't poke around much in case there were cubs, but went home to bring Nancy back to show her so she'd believe me. She wasn't all that thrilled about sitting that close to the opening, so we did not

stay long...

Yesterday I hauled out two small Maples for runners and began to pack out firewood for fall camps. I use seasoned stuff that I cut and stack along the various trails. There is so much I would give it away for free if there were any takers. When this pile is all done and stacked there will still be at least five cords, seasoned and waiting around the food plots, trails, and fields. This stack will fuel a roaring fire for a full eight days of camps.

Coming up, I hope to get to the range soon, and try those Winchesters with the triggers all adjusted. Just been too busy!

April Fools at Long Ridge Deer Camp

It is just about April 1st here at Long ridge and we are finally able to see the end of Old Man Winter. For as mild as a winter we did have compared to the usual, it did seem to drag out. Any month beats March here in Northern New England. March has a span of historic temperatures from 70 degrees to -20 F. Day before yesterday it was 15 degrees! Nasty and unpredictable. But during the good days we do get out and start projects. Below you are looking down from the Tall Stand onto the start of a new food plot. I cleaned up a lot of logging debri in the fall and burned a huge pile this winter. Now the final cleanup and then around  mid summer I will lime, rake, and prepare the ground for a fall planting of No-Plow or Secret Spot. You won't believe how green this will look. This is primarily a bow stand though the hunters do take deer here with muzzle loaders too. It is not a popular stand because it is within a hundred yards of camp, and 200 yards from the house so the feeling is that people talking and yapping dogs will keep any deer from coming in. Quite the contrary, there is heavy cover here between the farm and the stand and the deer pour in here like water.

Another view above from the tall stand, just to the right of the ATV. This also gives a view of the far field

Typical for April 1, most of our snow is gone. The trails which I ran today are mostly clear (except for ice crushed trees) , with occasional runs of snow. Below you can see the last snow in our fields. Once that is gone the frost will leave the ground and we are off and running to a full spring. Tonight starts a nasty long rain storm and that will likely wipe out what you see of the white stuff .

Above:  Once I got to the Far Ridge, I was amazed to see that the opening there was almost completely covered with snow. It is in the open, and unshaded, so I thought I would find it clear. Walking across it I found a foot of snow in places, so I guess it is the elevation that makes the difference. This is just a tad less than a mile from camp...

And last, above you see a project I started several years ago and am finally bringing to fruition. A wild apple orchard - there are a dozen or more trees in here. When we bought the place this area was dark and dank, shaded by huge pines and maples, and poplar. The apple trees were tall and stringy and dying, some already beyond saving. But with a bit of sunlight we let in, and ongoing pruning and logging, the trees are full of blossoms in the spring and drop a ton of apples each fall. The deer gorge on these apples, and turn the soil into a bog!. Today I was in there to prune the apple trees and to remove downed trees from the winter ice storms. I'll post a later spring picture of this area when it is green and beautiful. Next month, more food plot prep, game camera placement, and organizing hangers and ladder stands for the coming fall!

Mid-March at Long Ridge

Several weeks ago I took a picture of this beautiful Red Fox from our kitchen window. He is about 50 yards behind the house just beyond the garden hunting mice in a pasture. We watch him (or her) all winter pounce on big fat voles down through feet of snow. Even with hard crusts they jam their snouts down through it and manage to catch them. I could see the shine on this one's coat, and fox are in season, but hey, they whelp out this month, so I won't. I do worry for the one lone free ranging chicken we have left though. ( It's the hawks that really do them!)

This is what we call the Overlook. It is on the opposite end of the property from the Far Ridge, faces East, and would be an extraordinary view if I logged off in front of it. We ATV, hike, or snowmobile up there and have fires, and lunch sometimes. During deer season I strap a seat on a maple just over the edge and it makes a great stand looking out over a nice open hardwood draw..

Today, as usual I walked the dogs up one of our main snowmobile trails. If this weather keeps up, it will be too muddy in a few weeks. You can see where this year around brook has finally busted out through two feet of snow. This snow trail won't be back this spring unless we get a late March blizzard, (don't bet that we won't!) and actually even in April and early May we have been wacked. But the sledding season is OVER. Now it is hiking alone, until mud season is over.

On this mornings walk we passed under the Mid Stand whick looks out over the Far Field. It is a good stand, and I have taken great deer from it. It's drawback is that it is quite exposed and you cannot even twitch in this stand or you will be had. You can see that the floor of the stand is quite crooked and I will fix that this summer. It's like that because I put this up last July, all alone. I was twenty feet up, trying to hang this 35 pound base with one hand while I drilled holes for lag bolts to wrench it tight to the tree. It was about 80 degrees and very humid, and when I assessed the job I had done I was too beat to fix it then. Never got around to it, and stood on it like this when I arrowed a deer in October. We'll get it changed...

These two purebred Shelties are the dogs you do NOT want to take for walks in the woods if you want to see anything. They bark, herd my poor old Lab, race around like the nutcakes they are, and I am sure can be heard for miles. In fact I know they can, because often in the fall when I am way out on stand I can hear their barking as far as the Far Ridge. But they are smart, neat dogs, both rescues from smokey, small urban apartments. They can hardly believe they live on a farm now, with real sheep and fields to run on. The physically abused one (Blue Merle on the right) has almost forgotten her pain. They are happy!

Update on the Winchester model 70's - I did spend an afternoon last Monday on the PD range, and shot both rifles.
The wooden stocked Featherweight I shot with Federal Premium 125 grain (remember I want this as a varmint gun) PowerShocks. With it's seven pound factory trigger pull the best I could do was 1 1/4 groups.
I hadn't touched this stock gun until now, and that is as good as it shoots with any load. I decided that this gun needs trigger work first, so when I got back to Deer Camp, I adjusted it down to 3 pounds. We'll shoot it again with the same loads, and see what a difference if any that makes. Remember I am sticking with the same load in an attempt to wring best accuracy. When the gun has achieved that, THEN we'll seach/load up the best round for the rifle.

The Macmillan stocked Winlite also is completely stock, though if you recall I took the stock off and removed a bubble that was in contact with the side of the barrel, sanded it down, and refit the action at 45 inch pounds. With a stock trigger weight of just under 5 pounds I started off with Federal Premium 180 grain Barnes Triple Shock X. I was amazed! Just the small bubble removed from the stock gave me an immediate 1 inch group with this factory load. I was able to reproduce this group several times. I then took both rifles home and as above, adjusted the trigger down to three pounds. Can't wait to hit the range again. I have had that rifle for twenty years, and never, with any load, has it shot better than an inch and a quarter!. I'll keep you posted.

Last item, this week Fish and Game bulletined that everyone should take in their bird feeders, because the bears are out in force and marauding them. They haven't hit us yet, but got a house in the neighborhood about three miles away. Usually we have til about April 1st before they break out of hibernation, so that illustrates what an easy and short winter we've had... Jack

Above is Long Ridge Deer Camp as you read this. But don't get the wrong idea! Today it will get to nearly forty degrees, and we will lose a lot of this snow. The sheep were sheared yesterday, and we are counting on low temperatures of 28 degrees. T-shirt weather!

Today at Deer Camp it was forty degrees in the sun at 1 PM! Imagine that...I spent the afternoon snowmobiling and packing trails before I put the sleds back inside our trailer. Typically in the winter, I load snow into a bay in the machinery barn, pack it with the tractor, and this is where the winter machines you see above will park. Fire them up, and go. But by this time of the year if we get a warm spell like this week, the snow starts to melt and they'd be sitting on dirt if not moved. In the morning now, we can walk the dogs on the trails through the fields and woods, and not break through. They are hard as cement in the morning. But by 1 PM, they start to get soft and hard to walk on. The picture you see above is a trip we took up to the Far Ridge, about a mile from Deer Camp. Lots of snow up there, but even in the near field this evening there was 21 inches of snow waiting to melt. Seems strange since this was a low snowfall winter...we never even went on a real snowmobile trip because of the scarcity of snow on the trails.

Since this blog is primarily about deer hunting, I will say that the winter has been particularly kind to the Whitetails. They are used to surviving way more snow and cold than they were exposed to this winter and they are looking pretty good. The coldest temperature at the house over winter was 7 degrees below zero, way warmer than most winters. If we don't get one of those typical late March blizzards that dump another twenty inches, the deer will be fine.

Deer Camp is still packed in with snow so not much in the way of projects going on, but I have assembled another twenty foot ladder stand, and a hanger for placement next summer.

Still working on the Winchesters to see what they can improve to for group, and today I used a trigger pull gauge I borrowed from the PD armory to measure trigger pull. The wood stocked Featherweight you saw in the previous blog pulled about 7 pounds! No wonder it won't group better than 1 3/4! The Winlite 70 pulled at 4 3/4 pounds. Funny, because I couldn't feel much difference between them, Not terrible, but I will get the needed wrenches and adjust both to about three pounds..

Above is my snowmobile in front of Deer Camp. This is a short lived sight this time of year, though in New Hampshire, ANY time in March you can get 20 inches of snow and -5 degrees. The deer don't like that, and neither do we!

This is looking out of Deer Camp doorway, and the snowbank you see is what had slid off the roof. Today I rode my Ribicon out on the snowmobile trails, and when I strayed off, I bogged helplessly down. Bottomed out, but within walking distance of the machinery barm. Jumped on a second one and hauled mine out. I measured the snowpack there and it was nineteen iches. It's going fast though!

The Dead of Winter - Long Ridge

  Well, it is the second week of February everywhere, and in New Hampshire, this is what we call the dead of winter. Normally this time of year sees a ton of snow, and  cold. This year we have the cold, but little snow. The trails are mostly bare which means the snowmobiles are stationary. Very unusual...The cold we have plenty of. It is near zero or below every night, and the days are lucky to see high teens or twenty. Even our fastest brooks and widest rivers including the Connecticut are frozen solid. I love the old adage "running water never freezes"..

Oh, really? Our very waterfalls are a solid cascade of ice. Our dashing brooks are frozen solid in the layers of flow that they struggled to maintain, the ice flows from rock outcroppings along the highways are fabulous in their beauty...

But it gets old...without snow, brown dirt at 5 degrees looks down right depressing. So we put together 'winter projects' that may last well into summer. Here are some that are underway at Long Ridge Deer Camp..

Below you see two model 70 Winchester Featherweights in 30-06. The walnut stocked one on top sports a Leupold 3.5x10, and the MacMillan stocked one below carries a 1 3/4 x 5 Redfield Widefield scope. I use the lower one with the 1 3/4 power in our woods for deer and the upper one with the Leupold for smaller game such as Coyotes, etc. They are both sighted in at 100 yards,  the black one with 180 grain bullets, the wood stocked one for 150 grain bullets. Both, at their best, no matter the round (sans handloads) shoot 1 1/4 inch groups on a good day, 1 3/4 inch on a bad one. This winter's project is to get them to shoot 1 M.O.A. consistently by mid summer.

 I want to accomplish this task for very little money, since that will appeal to the most of you. I have never messed with these rifles, I have had them for years, I shot them right out of the box, and I want to say, that the present accuracy is totally adequate. These are the sweetest shooting rifles I have ever owned. Bolts as slick as honey, you point and shoot these babes and they always take game. It's almost uncanny how they are so forgiving. Put the crosshairs on it, and squeeze, and you own it. Simple as that. And firing the 30-06, they are good for anything on the continent. Anything.  So this is a cheap experiment to see what we can squeeze from them, if anything, without spending much money. The Walnut stocked 70 I will work with 125 grain bullets, factory loads, for the smaller game such as whitetails, and coyotes etc.  The Synthetic will be loaded with 180 grains, factory available loads only, good for all North American large game (though for grizzlies I would re-sight for 200/220 grains)

Above you can observe the two bores. They are rough. These rifles have been hammered over the years. I hunt with them, not show them. There are small nicks and dents all around the bores. For about fifty bucks I can have these bores crowned, and re-set. I won't do it until I have shot for groups without it so we will know what a change, if any, it made...

The 30-06 is not a terrible kicker, but there were days when I shot a hundred rounds at the range. This could be hard on the shoulder if you don't untilize a lead sled or some such device. I do have a magnum shoulder pad I utilize, but researched recoil pads on the market. Above you can see the hardened and unforgiving factory pads attached to my rifles. I've never minded them, but let's make it better! I have settled on the Limbsaver by Sims. Thirty seven bucks or so, and reports are that the felt recoil is unbelieveably attenuated. I'll let you know!

The walnut stock on the Winchester above is cracked, but when that happened it did not seem to effect accuracy, so I never worried about it. These barrels are not free floated, so there is a rise in the stock cut toward the muzzle end of the stock to put pressure on the barrel. I removed the actions from the stock, checked to see if all was well, and replaced, tightening stock action screws to 40 inch pounds each. The walnut stock was fine, the Macmillan stock had a bubble in the glass just to the left of the riser, and I removed this, smoothed the riser, and re-installed the action, again, tightening these screws to 40 inch pounds. This rifle always shot less than one inch groups, but ALWAYS threw a flyer out an inch or more. I wonder of it was this bubble on the left side of the riser, which a heating barrel would expand against, that caused this? We will see.

Just a picture above of my modest and un-organized work station in deer camp...not many or complicated tools needed for the work I do. I mostly need ammunition, not tools!

After I do all of the above, and achieve the best groups these rifles are capable of, I'll install, and sort out, and experiment with a Sims Laboratory barrel de-resonator. The factory claims these can drastically reduce groups. I'll report, you decide. If they do work, I am not sure what I'll do! I don't think I'll like the look of a rifle with one of these silly things around the barrel! And by the way, if your rifle has sights attached, don't bother. These won't fit!
After all of the above, should I decide that more needs to be done, a trigger job on each will happen. But that is real money, and I am hoping to tighten groups for just pocket change.

I will report on intial groups, and improvements (if any) with each change...I can't wait to get started! Jack

A Cold Hike at Longridge Deer Camp

 Winter is back here in the Connecticut Valley... -4 degrees this morning with twenty mile per hour winds, it was cold! Three inches of rain over the weekend left us with a foot loss of snow, and in the yard, we have next to nothing left. But today it actually went up to 8 degrees so I decided to take a hike in the heat of the day, up though a typical deer yard...I thought there was no snow, so I hiked without snowshows to my later regret. Below you see the Southern side of the Far Ridge...little snow. Lots of blowdown from last nights fierce winds..

Then you see the far Ridge Food Plot, on the North side of the ridge, with a good 14 inches of snow still there..not bad traveling because there was a crust that held me up pretty well.

Below is the tunnel we cut through our Christmas tree plantation last week. The deer love going through here, and we snowmobile though it. It reminds us of a tunnel cut through a huge Cedar swamp grove in Maine that we went through on a snowmobile trip some years ago. It was just like this but a mile long, and called the Love Tunnel...

While these pictures for some reason are not in order, at the end of my hike the sun had gone down, and a beautiful moon was rising. I've heard that it is being chased by Mars this month, and when it gets high above I'll step outside to try to see the red planet.

Next you see me entering the deer yard area, which is typically dark even on a bright day. The rifle you see is my Browning T-Bolt .22, which comes with me on many a hike. It is deadly on squirrels, headshots to 50-70 yards. None chattered today, but I also had my eye out for rabbits, mostly snowshoe hare, for the pot. They are white this time of year, and very difficult to spot without dogs to jog them.

Here is a rabbit trail, and if I had Beagles, this is where I would turn them loose...thousands of tracks this year, whereas last year there were hardly any. Go figure...

Of course, anywhere you find rabbit tracks in this part of the country you are going to see some Fisher tracks too...these were four plus inches, a very good sized animal.

Now, in the deer yard we can see some deer scat, and trails. Today, there was nothing really fresh to see. I have entered this yard in the past and observed many deer. When the snow is very deep they do not run at first, rather they check you out and decide if it is worth the risk to tramp through the deep snow...Today I saw none...indicative of the low snow level.

Apparently the deer had decided at one point to yard up, and had started to strip the hemlock trees of their bark. There isn't much nutrition in this, but it fills their bellies and quells the hunger pains as they burn off natural fat to stay alive. The tree below is so stripped it probably will not make it another year, though they ARE tough!

On the North side of the ridge I began to regret my not bringing snowshoes. There was easily 18 inches of snow, and while that is very little for this time of year, I had thought we lost a lot more. Fortunately the crust was decent in a lot of places and held me up quite well.  

Once I got to the trail system, and stopped bushwacking I found places on the trail that the rain had washed nearly to ground level. Then at temperatures way below zero, the ground froze and produced these heaving crystals over 18 inches high. In some places when you hit bare ground you will fall in over a foot, as the earth has heaved and frozen so hard that you are stepping on nothing but a world of crystal, and plunge through!

Below, as I approach the farm through the woods, I take a look at the mess ahead of me, all ice and snowstorm blowdown, and a huge clean-up project that surely won't start before spring. But all in all, a nice two hour hike, it was 8 degrees when I started and four when I finished. Didn't see a single creature, but know that they saw me! Another wonderful afternoon at deer camp!

A Winters Afternoon at Long Ridge

  Today I just had to get out and do something related to hunting deer. Can't work the land, yesterday I felled some Maples for the deer to munch on during super cold spells, and burned a couple of brush piles...what to do?

Yesterday it went up to 36 degrees here, and we lost a lot of snow. I didn't even wear a sweater! Today it just about went up to freezing and was very pleasant. Tonight we are getting up to a foot of snow again, so I figured I would take my ATV out to the Western stand to loosen the hanger straps, and retrieve the foam seat from it before the mice beat me to it. Another week or so and the ATVs won't be able to make it through the snow, and we'll be on snowmobiles. I headed up the road we live on and a quarter mile away is one of our log landings you see above, to enter that part of the trail system.

Just above the log landing you enter the Western trails and I am headed to a food plot, both to service my hanger stand, and to check out any recent sign. You can see I have been up here  before we lost some snow on a snowmobile...

When I reach the food plot I can see that the deer have been on this one, digging down through a foot of snow to reach some greens. That will soon stop though, as we begin to accumulate snow, the deer winter in their yards and stop moving around. With a foot or less on the ground they are still active.

Twenty feet up on a Black Birch, shrouded in Hemlock branches is my hanger..Up I go and loosen the straps and toss the seat down to my ATV parked below...

After I got the job completed I couldn't bear to head back to camp quite yet and head on up the Western perimeter trail to see what else is going on. On quite a few steep inclines I have to work the Honda to keep going, but make it up over the top, and head along the upper reaches. A ton of tracks, mostly deer, fox and coyote, but I do find one very fresh set of Fisher tracks crossing the trail. These are just a bit bigger than a large Coyote track, and easy to spot by the way they kind of scrabble along. Then up and across the top and over to the Eastern stand, and on the way back to camp I took the time to mark trees that I plan to take out along the trail this spring. Not an exciting afternoon at Long Rindge Deer Camp, but a satisfying one! Hope you all were able to get out as well! For those of you still hunting, lucky you!