Phil09

Fantastic - love your work.

Great idea on the RV owner Facebook pages – some of the RV brands have very active and vocal owner groups. Another source is to poke around YouTube searching for your RV manufacturer and the slide out manufacturer. There is a lot of content out there on RV's.

Our place is about 30 miles northeast of O'Keefe WMA and agree with the earlier comment on the rut winding down. Have seen a couple of scrapes being refreshed in the last few days and this weekend had a young 6-pointer harassing does on a food plot.

Good luck on your hunt - bring some warm clothes!!

3 1/2

Have flown with hunting rifles several times with the most recent to/from Canada last November. The TSA and each airline have rules for traveling with sporting firearms and I always print a copy and take with me.

I personally would NOT use a TSA lock and I don't care what Check-in Agent Karen says. Here's the quote from the TSA "...Only the passenger should retain the key or combination to the lock unless TSA personnel request the key to open the firearm container to ensure compliance with TSA regulations. You may use any brand or type of lock to secure your firearm case, including TSA-recognized locks..."

I've only flown Delta and their partner airlines and Delta's policy is not hard to find. Each of the times I travelled with guns I had zero issues anywhere in the process. This includes domestic US flights as well as a couple of international trips.

Look up and review the rules and take a copy along in case you run into Karen. Supervisors or airline Station Chiefs will pay attention to the written rules.

If you are traveling to Canada, I would encourage you to avoid any connection in Toronto. Travelled thru there a number of times on business trips (no guns) and was consistently underwhelmed with that airport, the layout of connection flights and the staff in general. Not the worst airport I've ever been in, but the worst in my opinion on the North American continent.

Good luck with your trip.

We keep four or five feeders out all summer at our place in North Mississippi. Hard to make a good count on number of bids, but we have steady action on the feeders starting in June. Usually go thru about 1/3 of a gallon of homemade nectar a day.

For us, the big rush is early September and lasts two weeks or so during which the increased number of birds consume a full gallon a day. Its a crazy time but fun to watch them.

Wyoming - elk and deer
Kansas - deer

We bought a place in North Mississippi five years ago that has some mature sawtooth oaks – all 12-13 years old. First three years we owned the place the trees produced well and the deer absolutely hammered them. We can see one row of sawtooths from our house and when the acorns started falling there were often two or three deer walking around waiting for the next treat to hit the ground.

Year four was an unbelievable bumper crop – way more than the any of the previous three years. Just a gut feel but it seemed like we had at least twice the production than any of the previous three years. Year five (this past summer/fall) we had almost zero sawtooth acorn production. I’ve read the boom and bust cycle is not uncommon. Hoping for a better year in '23. We also have a good number of mature native also which produced very well this year – probably the best in the 5 years we’ve been here. Wish I knew why this occurred. Did not seem to be weather related as the overall weather was not bad and had good spring and early summer rains.

I know this doesn’t really answer your question on new trees but we are very happy to have the mature sawtooths and our deer like them even more!

I have wrapped my own rods for 20+ years - it is very easy and one does not need to drop down into the proverbial rabbit hole unless you really want to. Get the MudHole kit - they are good people, I have bought from them for years. You will be ahead of paying someone to fix the little things and without too much effort and you may find wrapping your own rods from the blanks a fun hobby.

Also a second vote on getting something simple to turn the rod while the finish is curing. Not that expensive and and easier to get the final finish to level properly.

It's a fun and useful hobby. But like all hobbies, there's a deep end that is easy to fall into!!

Saskatchewan - first time up there and a definite bucket list trip. Hunting for a week in late November - hope I don't freeze to death!!