Veterans Day -2008

What a special day!

This Veteran's Day program was held at the Hallock School and included all the grades in the recognition of veterans. From art projects to essay's about what freedom means to the students. Most important to us was a late addition to the program. This addition started earlier this year when Bob Cameron requested Floyd's WWII ribbons and medals that he wanted to put in a display case. At the time we didn't know how this would be presented until a few days before this program.

It wasn't until recently we were able to be aware of Floyd's acts of heroism. Carrie interviewed Floyd a number of years ago when he shared these events with her. As Floyd was presented with this display case, Bob Cameron read the citation that went with the presentation of the Bronze and Silver Star. It was a very emotional moment for all of us. When I asked Floyd what he was thinking about during this presentation he said he was thinking about all the soldiers who didn't make it back.

After the program, we were invited to the VFW in Kennedy for a very nice lunch.

The Display Case

Bob Cameron not only presented the case but also discussed each of the ribbons, medals, and insignias.

TheProgram

As you can see, the program was held the gym of the Hallock School. We had selections by the band and choir along with the winners of the essays. Here they are getting ready to present Floyd with his medals.



Don't know who the guy on the left, but the person at the podium is Bob Cameron, the Veterans Services Officer for the county.


Showing the medals to the audience

Bob & Floyd

After the program

Here's a picture of family present during the program.

Glenn, Floyd, and Bob Cameron. We sent three pictures to the Kittson County Enterprise and they sent copies of their pictures to us. Additionally, they asked to interview Floyd to put a piece together for the paper.

Floyd and three of his 13 grandchildren

Breanna, Chassity, Floyd, and Nick


It was such a special Veterans Day program. What a wonderful community to take the time to remember and pay respects to our nation's veterans. And finally what a special and appropriate recognition of Floyd.

MEA to Deer Season 2008 - Trail Cam Pics/video

Sorry this has taken this long to post. Most of it has to do with learning YouTube and how to convert a trail cam video clip to a "YouTube" video and connecting that to the blog. Thanks to Lonnie's patience, I developed a new skill.

So what's the takeaway from the pictures and video? I think if you plant habitat, the deer will come. We just looked at three of the trail cams. The camera on the north end of the 120 acres still has the San Disk with the pics. The most active camera between MEA and deer season was the pond stand with 18 of the 72 pictures of deer; most were at night. Second was the gate camera with a number of video clips and a few still shots of deer. The most significant video during this time was of a Timber Wolf! Finally, the least active camera was the one by Matt's stand. Although we had some deer activity, we had lots more people activity. During the opening weekend, however, this area was one of the busiest.

I think next year we will be moving some of the cameras and maybe adding one or two. I would also expect we will be adding more habitat.

The Pond Trail Cam


I included this picture since it shows a nice young buck that might be the one that has been rubbing on the spruce tree and willows northwest of the cabin.


I couldn't see what was causing the ripple in the pond, it is interesting to note that something besides Tom Baker swims in the pond

Just thought this was a cute picture of a doe wondering what's going on. Again, most of the pictures during this time were at night.

I liked this picture

Another night time picture

The Gate Camera

Ok, this was the only thing I took from the gate camera. We had some nice pictures of deer along with a few nice videos, but they were all "trumped" by this video of a Timber Wolf walking east on our driveway early one morning.

The Camera by Matt's Stand

The most significant picture was the one I loaded in a previous blog showing John and Nick Sanner dragging their doe from Matt's stand back to the cabin.

The 2008 Deer Hunt

Due to the rain and the weather, there were fewer hunters for opener. Dick and his sons and Mike were there along with Tom Baker and three of his sons; Micky, Tom, and Dan. John and Nick Sanner came up Monday afternoon. Bob and Tyler Norland were hunting today, Saturday, November 15th.

This is a nice buck Tom Baker shot out of his stand on the opening day. Tom said it was close enough he could have thrown the bullet at it.

This was a team effort. Mike and Jason shot this fork horn out of Matt's stand and as you can see below, the meat we had from this deer was delicious!


The mud, the blood, and the deer

This is a nice doe John and Nick Sanner shot out of Matt's stand Monday afternoon. This picture was taken by the Trailcam by Matt's stand and although it is of poor quality, you can see John and Nick are dragging this deer using John's belt; probably the toughest drag we have had in a long time. We have been using ATVs since 1983 and this is the first one I can recall where they did it the old fashioned way.

Probably the best food we had all weekend; some ribeye and tenderloins from Mike and Jason's buck. They cooked it on the grill and used butter and garlic salt. There was no gamey taste to the meat at all.

You can see Patrick, Darin, and Nathan enjoyed the meal. Seems that beer also helped digestion.

Here's another picture with Peggy at the table.

The Well

We asked Bruce Gunderson from Karlstad to drill a well for us. Bruce has been drilling wells in the area for a long time; he drilled Israelson's well years ago (hit water at 33 feet). The first well by the cabin was drilled to about 250' with no water. The noticeable event from the first well was drilling up some wood from about 100'. We wondered how old that wood is. I'm not sure how expensive carbon dating is but it would be nice to know the age of the wood.

The second location you can see from the pictures. It's near the disk and the fence along the north side of the 80. Again, no luck. I think Bruce was as disappointed as we were. When I asked him what he thought we should do next he said, "Go home". That was because he has three or four more wells to drill before winter sets in and since we didn't have that urgency, he moved his stuff. This gives us some time to plan what we do next.

One of the pictures shows Floyd trying his "hands" at witching for water. Actually we both tried it with no response from the coat hangers other that our hands got really cold.

I'm not sure what Bruce's bill will be for these two dry holes. He's going to talk to Floyd and send the bill to him. I think the cost for a dry hole is about $5/foot which for us would be about $2500 for the two dry holes.

Hard to build a cabin with no water so this seems to be our highest priority.



This is the second location for a well. At this point the rig is down about 170 feet. The tub you see in the foreground is used to hold water that is used as a lubricant for the drill. Since it is also pulling up clay and ground up pieces of rock, it needs needs to be shoveled out.


This rig can drill to about 300'. If you need to drill deeper, there are other folks around that can do this. Many times when you do drill deeper in this country, you find brackish (salt) water.
On November 12th, Floyd and I spend most of the day helping Bruce finish drilling to 253 feet. You can tell the hardness of the soil by how fast the drill goes down. At one time we did hit something softer but it didn't last long.

For both dry holes, Bruce is required by the state to "grout" the holes closed.



The tank of water is required to lubricate the drilling system and to pull debris up from the bottom of the hole. When we started drilling this past Wednesday, it tookus about 2 hoursto deal with ice and frozen pipes before we could start.



Yep, this is water witching. We cut a coat hanger and created two "L" shaped pieces and held one in each hand. You can see Floyd holding the one in his left hand below the elbow of the hanger. There are folks in this country that swear by this process. We left a message with Glenn Anderson to try witching for us but didn't hear back from him.

MEA 2008 Trail Cameras Pics

We currently have five trail cams. The pictures here are from three of them. The trail cam by the gate had a defective chip and the trail cam just north of the cabin on the fense had no pictures. Below are three sets of pictures. What you can see is where we had food plots, we had deer eating.


Matt's Stand - The trail cam is basically looking north and taking pictures from the intersection of the south end of the 80 and the southeast end of the dozing.

Cabin Pond

120 Acres - We have a small food plot on the East side of the 120 acres just North of the trail that goes into the state land.

We are feeling pretty good about our success with food plots this year and are looking forward to adding more plots next year.

MEA 2008

What a fun time! MEA is the time to be at the cabin; enjoying company, the outdoors, planning for the fall hunt, and telling stories.

Dick was up with Jason and Madison, Patrick and Sara, Darin and Jamie. Tom was up with Tommy, Dan, John, Micky and a friend. Bob & Sue were up with Chris & Katie, Caleb and Hannah, Mat & Sarah, Paige and Kyla, John and Jeff.

Some of the activities were:

• Sighting in rifles
• Tom put up a big stand on the West end of the pasture.
• John Christenson put up one by the pond in the Northeast corner of the pasture.
• Dick put up one on the North central part of the 120 acres.
• Dick also refurnished Watertower at Maryland
• Campfires
• Starting a fort in the woods; the start of Moose Scull Lodge II?
• Catching Frogs
• And so on and so on . . .

The weather was beautiful. The recent rain had left things pretty wet so the ATVs got really muddy.


Here's Peggy and Floyd on their ATV. What an amazing couple.

Caleb having the time of his life.

Although this might be hard to figure out, Madison, Kyla, and Paige are taking down some small, live trees using nothing but their hands and determination.

Funny how much fun you can have with a frog!

Part of Dick's crew. They took his ATV (in this pic), his trailer also in this pic and loaded it up with crew, furniture, and supplies and went to Watertower . . . and they made it through all the mud and water. I think they only had to winch themselves out once.

Here's John's new stand next to the pond on the Northeast corner of the pasture.

Here's the view from the East side of John's stand. Would be a pretty cool screen saver.

This is a picture of Peggy and Floyd's house. The weather was like this the whole time we were up north. This was Monday morning, October 20th. On Sunday night they had a pretty hard frost and as we were taking these pictures, the leaves were falling like crazy.

If any of you have pictures you would like posted, please send them to me.

Bob & Sue