Cleared a little bit of brush today

A shooting lane runs up the right side of this photo.  The lower edge of the photo is about 50 yards from the shooting position.  Most deer travel through this area in an east-west direction.

The bright green is mostly Norway Spruce.  Great Horned Owl nesting pair in the south block (lower rectangle).

Native range of the American Persimmon in green although random specimens are scattered the entire length of the Wabash river.  The gold star marks the location of Salamander's property.  The distance between Salamander's property and Logansport, Indiana (where I was told by a reliable witness that persimmon trees are common) is about 150 miles.

The patch outlined in orange is about sixty feet by sixty feet and is now cleared.  It will get about 15 persimmon trees planted in three rows of five.  The trees are seedlings from a decent, not great, persimmon tree.  I anticipate grafting trees one, three and five in each row to elite varieties.

K-6, a Claypool persimmon in the bottom of a five gallon bucket.  I think all of the discoloration is due to most of the tannin in the fruit migrating to the skin.

Size comparison between Morris Burton on the left and K-6 on the right.  The K-6 fruit measured 53mm in diameter.  Ugly as a drowned corpse but citrus overtones in its flavor and edible (barely) when crisp, perfection when soft.

This is a screen shot of the area immediately east of the area shown in the first image.  You can see that it is about 20% dead ash trees based on how much of the canopy looks like gray spiders.

Some of the dead ash trees are monsters.

And this is the next "tile" over.  This is about 35% dead ash trees.

LOTS of open ground to plant interesting trees like persimmons, shellbark hickory, assorted "swamp" oaks and the like.

If the ground were better drained I would be planting Chinese Chestnuts.

Once the persimmon start bearing this place will be like the Dairy Queen in July.  This is where ALL the cool deer will want to be.