Sweetwater Days 04

I checked out my work schedule and could barely stifle a shout of joy.  Labor Day holiday was on Monday, but I had to work it.  Instead, I was scheduled to be off the following Friday, which meant I had a three-day weekend when the roads wouldn’t be crowded with people.

If I drove straight out after work Thursday, I could spend the night and wake up to two full days at Sweetwater before I had to drive back on Sunday.

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I pulled onto the property at Sweetwater after dark that night and took some time to just sit on the porch and relax.  It was so peaceful, quiet, and…awesome.

The next morning I got up and fixed myself one of my favorite breakfasts.  I call it apple pie sandwiches.

To make one of them, I used a couple slices of raisin bread, smeared liberally on one side with strawberry cream cheese.  Then I sliced an apple into about 1/8 to 1/4-inch slices and covered the cream cheese on one piece of raisin bread with them.  The other slice of bread was put on top.

Get it – sandwich?

Anyway, I had previously picked up a double pie iron in the camping section at Wal-Mart and seasoned it properly. 

After I had a couple sandwiches assembled, I placed them side-by-side inside the iron and placed it over the fire in the fire ring.  It would have been better if I had waited for the fire to burn down to coals, but I was hungry and had work I wanted to get started on.

I turned the pie iron a few times to cook the sandwiches a bit more evenly.  It worked but they still got a little burned.  That didn’t make much difference though, they were still DE-LICIOUS!

OK, truthfully, that was the first time I had ever made my apple pie sandwiches, but NOW the recipe is one of my favorites.

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I ate my breakfast while watching the hummingbirds eating theirs just a few feet away.  They were very pleasant breakfast companions.

I spent my time that weekend trimming branches and cutting some fallen trees.  Besides that, I cleaned out the leaves that had fallen into the spring and did a few other things that needed to be done.

 It was hard but satisfying work.  I headed home, knowing that Annie and I would be back a couple weeks later.

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Two weeks later we packed up for the trip.  It was going to be an overnight trip, and lots of projects planned, so I knew I wouldn’t have time to do any work on my computer.  I chose to leave it home for one of the few times EV-er!  That’s not like me, and I’ll probably never do it again.

Before we went down, I had bought a fifty-pound bag of Wal-Mart Ole Roy T-Bone and Bacon flavor dog food.  Besides that, I bought a can of cherry flavor Kool Ade and a 10-pound bag of dry (powdered) molasses.  Annie bought a little bottle of anise extract.

I had a different recipe in mind.

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In a past blog post, I mentioned that it is legal to bait some wildlife in Arkansas.  I had never hunted over bait before and I was eager to find out how effective it is.

As soon as we got to Sweetwater, I took a couple bags of deer bait (made mostly of corn and soybeans) and a couple hang-on deer feeding bags that I’d also bought for this trip, and went to the south side of the clearing the cabin was in.  Just downhill of the hunting blind that some previous owner built, I hung the two feeders, filled them with the deer bait, and hung a game camera to keep track of any critters that were attracted by the food.

With that done, I took out my drill, along with a hole saw kit, a jigsaw, a steel tape measure, and a plastic, food-grade, 55-gallon drum.

Using the tape, I measured about 1/3 of the way down from the removeable lid and drilled four two-inch holes, each about ¼ way around the barrel.  I did the same just below half-way down from the top, except I only drilled three holes.  Where the fourth one would have been, I cut out an eight-inch square hole.  With a length of leftover swing-set chain and a hair-pin-type lynch pin, I now had a barrel for holding bear bait.

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Besides the bait and barrel, I had bought a new 17-foot tall ladder-stand to put up overlooking the barrel. 

The trail to the spot where I wanted to place the bear-bait barrel was about ¼ mile south of the cabin, and another ¼ mile up the steep hillside.  I believe we measured it at approximately 400 feet in elevation change.  We didn’t have my four-wheeler with us and we didn’t think the truck would make it up the steep slope and narrow path, so it was up to two near-retirement-age people to do some hauling…very near.

On the way up the first time Annie made a discovery that pleased me, although she was slightly less enthusiastic about it.  Something had stopped to relieve itself and had left a bear-size pile of…you know.  I poked around and found a lot of fibrous weed pieces, along with several persimmon seeds.

I knew, with 99% certainty, that I was looking at bear poop.

That’s a good sign for a bear hunter.

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We spent the better part of half-a-day hauling everything up and installing the bait-barrel.  We assembled the ladder-stand but didn’t have the right tools to tighten all the bolts, so we didn’t get that finished the first day.

After I had the barrel chained to a handy tree and mixed in the dog foot with half the Kool Ade, molasses, and anise as I poured them all into the container.  I used a branch to stir some more, then sprinkled some of the Kool Ade, molasses, and anise around the barrel, to help get more of the smell into the air and, hopefully, attract a bear.

Then I gathered several nearby small, dead trees and shoved their trunks into the eight-inch opening, effectively blocking raccoons and opossums from gaining access to the bait before a bear could find it.

I strapped my newest game cam on a nearby tree, aiming at the barrel, then spread some deer mineral attractant nearby before we went back to the cabin for the night.

Annie grilled up some of the deer steak I had left over from last year and we both enjoyed another one of her fantastic meals, then sat by the campfire and relaxed for a while beneath the starry sky before heading inside for a peaceful night’s rest.

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Next morning, after enjoying a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs, and coffee, we headed back up the hill.

At the top we were amazed to find that SOMETHING had pulled every, single tree out of the eight-inch hole and had eaten a significant amount of the bait.  I looked and looked but couldn’t find any tracks on the ground or hairs pulled off by the sides or the hole in the barrel.  I KNEW it was a bear but just couldn’t find any proof.

This is when I COULD have done a couple things.  I COULD have changed out the memory card in the cam and taken it to look at in my computer.  I COULD have done that, except that I had made the decision NOT to brink my computer and, somehow, I had forgotten to bring my bag containing my extra memory cards.

I would have to wait another two weeks to find out if I had attracted a bear or lured in somebody’s very smart, very large, dog.

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Annie and I tightened all the bolts on the stand and were ready to hoist it up and lean it against the chosen tree.  At that point I turned the instruction manual to the back page to see if there were any tips about how to raise the 17-foot steel structure without hurting ourselves, or dropping the stand and damaging it.

On back of the pamphlet, in bold letters, it proclaimed that it takes THREE MEN to lift the stand into place.

Uh, oh.

Well, the designers may have found that it takes three men but, evidently, Annie and I are worth three men at least.

We took the bottom section of the ladder off to shorten the stand down to a more manageable 13-feet and carefully hoisted and pushed it up until it leaned against the big oak.  Then, I grabbed the bottom remaining ladder section and lifted everything up as I slid and jockeyed it up the tree trunk.

While I held the stand up, Annie lifted the bottom ladder section that we had removed, and slid it into place, holding it there while I lowered the whole thing until the two legs of the ladder touched the ground.

So much for the easy part.

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The ground had a slight slope to it…not enough to notice by looking, but enough that a 17-foot tall ladder stand wanted to lean sideways and fall off the tree.

I held the stand stable as Annie searched until she found two large, flat sheets of rock.  One was thicker than the other but not quite enough to make up for the slope.  I was able to pick up and steady the stand and kick enough dirt out that the rock slab worked perfectly. 

So far, so good.

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The stand kit had come complete with all the parts and hardware needed to assemble it, except that two of the bolts were not the size listed in the assembly manual, but they fit and worked fine.  Also, it re-e-e-eally should have come with two ratchet straps instead of just one.  Don’t get me wrong, it only said it had one, and only said it needed one, but it re-e-e-eally needed another.  Let me explain.

The package came with some long straps to be attached to the platform and for one of the men to wrap it around the tree and help pull the platform up as the other two men pushed it up.  Once raised, it was to be tied off to steady the stand as someone climbed a-a-a-all the way up the wobbly ladder to the platform that was still not firmly attached to the tree.  That person must then swing one end of the ratchet strap around the tree and catch it with the opposite hand, thread it through the ratchet, attach the hooks on both ends to the stand, pull the strap as tightly as possibly, and ratchet it tight.

Mind you, this all had to be done while maintaining his balance and hoping the stand, which kept moving slightly, didn’t fall, taking him with it.

I guess the manufacturer assumed those three men would have a fifty-pound kid (even better, a monkey) with them to do all that while the men steadied the stand. 

We didn’t have a monkey.  Nope.  We had a 250-pound gorilla.

The stabilizer/stand-off pole, which was attached to the ladder and the tree about seven feet off the ground, would have helped a lot, except that they had included a piece of rope for attaching it to the tree, when it re-e-e-eally needed a ratchet strap, which would have basically locked it in place instead of allowing it to move a little.  A little is way too much.

Anyway, we got the stand up and in place, and I would return in another couple weeks to strap that stabilizer pole to the tree with a ratchet strap, and make the whole thing a lot safer, and me a lot more comfortable while climbing and sitting in it.

Right now, though, I’ve gotta say thank you to a special person.

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I’ve heard some men talk about how soft women are, and how they don’t know anything about doing any “real” work.  You know, they do women’s work while we do men’s work, which is too hard for women to do.

Well, nobody ever convinced my Annie that.  That lady works HARD!  She made an extra trip downhill and back up each day with something we had forgotten, while I worked on the ladder-stand.  In two days, I made a total of five trips up that steep hill, which means she made seven.

Remember, it was to help me get ready to hunt, something she doesn’t enjoy and doesn’t do.  So why’d she do it?  Well, for me, because that’s just the way she is.

She’s MY girl, and you can’t have her!

Anyway, as I was videoing the stand, I made the observation that a man’s just a man, but a woman is worth two men.

My Annie may be worth three…or more.

Thanks, Annie.  I love ya!

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A couple weeks later, on our way home from a week with grandkids in Oklahoma, we stopped at Sweetwater because I wanted to change out the cards in my game cams.  I shouldered a couple 20-pound bags of Ole Roy and we climbed the hill to the bear barrel.  There I found the barrel absolutely empty except for a few crumbs of dried molasses.  I poured in the dog food and changed out the card in the camera facing the bear barrel.  Then I put up a game cam facing the mineral I had earlier put out for deer, and we headed toward Jonesboro, Arkansas so we could celebrate our granddaughter, Harper’s, birthday. 

As we drove toward J-boro, I started my computer and checked the game cam cards.  There were a lot of videos of trees waving in the wind, quite a few of antlerless deer, some of smaller bucks, and a few of a nice eight-point buck.  He was standing close enough to the hunting blind in the yard at the cabin that I could have hit him with a rock.

Then I picked up the card I’d gotten from the cam at the barrel, and put it in my computer.  I immediately saw a couple videos of Annie and me working on the barrel, but my eyes were drawn to almost five-hundred video-clips of a beautiful bear visiting, playing, scratching, and even napping between porking-out on Ole Roy.  He was healthy when he came in the first night after we’d placed the barrel, and he put on quite a few pounds in the two weeks before I retrieved the cards.  Either that or there is more than just one bear coming in to my bait.

Yes, I’ll be looking for him and the eight-pointer as soon as I can afford an out-of-state big game license…which won’t be long, believe me.

And I’ll tell you all about it; you know I will.

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