More South Dakota Visitors!

Our time here in South Dakota is quickly coming to an end. When we arrived the end of August thinking 6 weeks was a long time but now with only a couple days left we wonder where the time went.

Granted our days were busy with working on the property and visiting but time just seemed to fly by. Jim and Brenda Jordan arrived on Thursday the 14^th, a few hours after the Belisle’s departure and we put them to work almost immediately.

Our latest visitors Jim and Brenda!

Still discovering the best eateries in the area we went to the catfish fry Friday night at the Hitchrail in Pringle with Rudee and Phil from Custer as well as the Jordans. It was no shore lunch of Canadian walleye but both the fish and company were good. We were amazed at how much Jim and Brenda had in common with Phil and Rudee. Both had belonged to different chapters of the same motorcycle club and even though they lived more than a thousand miles apart, they had attended some of the same events and had probably walked within feet of each other. Now years later they met in Pringle, South Dakota…..what are the odds?

Next up was a trip to Custer and the Purple Pie Place! It is well worth the visit if you are in the area, both for the food and the pie.

While in Custer we took in some of the sites..... Did you know there is a herd of buffalo roaming the streets of Custer? Almost every street corner has one. We were not able to capture every one on camera but we got a few!

Kevin arrived Saturday morning and so started a busy week of working on each other’s property. He had brought a hammer drill with a 2” bit so we spent several days drilling holes into the rock so we could eventually get T posts into the ground. Some of the holes went good while others took up to 20 minutes to get down the 24”s. When we return in November we should be able to pound the T posts in and finish this project.

Barb and Brenda were busy with their own project which involved tearing apart an old wooden fence that was on the property. Barb hopes to use some of the wood for a feature wall in the house so they carefully took the fence apart and stacked the wood on a pallet.

We have also been kicking around some different names for the property. Being in the west (or at least western South Dakota) we are thinking of something with a “-“ (bar) in the name and since it fits in with Barbs name, all the better! We are thinking of J - - (pronounced J bar bar), or J – B (pronounced J bar B). Still thinking about it but we are leaning towards the last one…..

Meanwhile over on the Filip estate Kevin was doing some grading to level his building site and getting his driveway in!

Kevin digging in the electrical line

The driveway going in on Kevin's place

 Once his site was done the same excavator came over to our place and started leveling our site.

The dozer cleared the site and is pushing some trees

This meant that we had to move to another part of the property and live “off grid” for a few days until our site is ready. When we come back in November we should have sewer and water right at our site!

After having to move parked near the cattle pen (Jordan's in the background)

But the biggest excitement for the week was the fact that bow hunting opened on Saturday the 23^rd. We had seen a couple of nice bucks on the property with one of them definitely being the one I wanted if the opportunity presented itself.

Nice, but not the one I wanted.....

This is will be nice next year....

This is the one I wanted!!!

Opening day arrived and it was cold, overcast and rainy but with only 3 days before we headed to North Dakota I headed to my stand at 5am an hour before first light. While I was waiting for the sun to rise I heard a deer walk by near where the trail camera was positioned. It was still too dark to see it but in my mind I just knew it was the big one!

As the night turned to day, I saw 3 smaller bucks and several does and when I headed in at 9:30 for a break (I was wet and freezing!) I grabbed the SD card out of the camera in front of my stand. When I got back to the camper and looked at the pictures….sure enough, the big guy had walked by just before shooting light!

Still raining/misting I went back out at 11:30 with plans to sit until sunset. I saw two of the same smaller bucks from the morning but not the big guy. Then around 3:30 I noticed movement off to my right and there he was! Walking through the woods about 40 yards in front of me, I drew back my bow and waited for him to stop. He stopped several times but he was behind some brush the arrow would never make it through but just when I thought I could not hold the bow back any more he stepped forward into a clearing and I released the arrow.

Almost immediately the buck turned and ran but it looked like the arrow hit where I wanted it to. I got down out of my tree and went to the spot where he was standing to see if I had hit it but found nothing…no arrow, no blood….nothing, just some tracks of him running away. I followed the tracks for 50 yards expecting to start seeing a blood trail but found nothing. I spent an hour scouring the trail looking for my arrow or the tiniest speck of blood…nothing. Did I miss? Did the arrow hit an unseen branch and deflect? Dejected I walked back to the camper and relayed my story to Barb.

She said lets go out and look again so we went back out into the rain for another look. We covered much of the same area and found nothing. As we were walking the back fence line looking for any sign I looked up and laying 20 yards ahead of me was the deer! It was obvious that he had been dead awhile so my shot had been good. We backtracked the trail and could not find any blood, the deer had traveled about 100 yards with no blood trail at all. Upon closer inspection I saw that the arrow hit a couple of inches higher than I was aiming and did not pass through so the blood stayed inside the animal. 

Dejection turned to elation as Barb and I hugged each other right there in the woods. After taking a few pictures, we loaded it up in the 4 wheeler and hung it in a tree for the night. The next day we processed the deer, packaged up the steaks and took the rest to the processor to make some sausage and burger. Now we need to find someplace to store all this meat!

Success!

Next up is North Dakota to see our good friends Bob, Deanne, Chris, Holly and Bob and Sue for some farm work and with luck some ducks and bucks!