Looked at some property today

One of my brothers is looking at property.  He invited me to tag along and walk one of the parcels he is looking at.

Nettles, dogwood, hawthorn, viburnum, brambles.  A few dying elm.  Almost nothing over 8 inches in diameter.

The parcel is 1320 feet deep by 2640 feet along the road.  That pencils out to 80 acres.  Half of the parcel is pucker-brush growing on wet, organic, peaty soil.

The other half is broken into small, skinny fields of ten or fifteen acres.

Do you see the deer trail coming across the wheat field.

In deer hunting language, this is a classic deer sanctuary.

The problem with too big of a piece of "sanctuary" is that it is too hard to hunt.  Ideally, you would like to put up deer stands between their bedroom and their kitchen.  Say, 25 yards off the trail for bow hunting and 40-to-70 yards for shotgunning.

Unfortunately for the owner of this property, there are just not very many places that are not in the middle of the bedroom or where a stand can be erected.

We walked the perimeter of the property and this is what we saw

If you look closely you will see a second deer stand artfully framed by the middle step of the ladder.

Little trailer park in the woods.  Three deer stands in this photo.

With a 4th stand on the tree on the extreme left of this photo.

The stands averaged about 40 yards apart.

I found the crisscross grooving on the top of the stump to be interesting.  My brother thought it was so the mineral (salt, mostly) would soak into the wood and so the block would never sit in a puddle.  The ability of a salt block to attract deer is diluted when there is a salt block every 100 yards.

Three sides of the parcel, (5280 feet) averaged a deer stand every 40-to-50 yards apart.  Some were on the parcel.  Others were on adjoining property.

In theory, the stands that are on the property can be removed.  But some people figure they have squatter's rights.  Their grand-daddy help old Elmer out of a ditch in 1947 and, in their mind, that still ought to count for something.  Confronting people with this kind of entitlement mentality is one of the less pleasant things about owning property.

It isn't just deer hunters of course.  We had to confront a young lady who was removing gates out of our barn after we bought our place.  She was convinced the gates were hers because she used to raise 4-H animals in that barn.

I don't think my brother is going to bid very high on this parcel.  Even if most of the hunters in the area emotionally buy into Quality Deer Management (a highly unlikely event), given the pressure it seems unlikely that many bucks will grow to be larger than six points.

An outbuilding

There is a small outbuilding on the property.  It has interesting perforated metal siding and is built on concrete piers.

Some of the flooring was still in place.  Do any of you guys know if this style of structure was a chicken house, a corn crib or a sheep shed.  Inquiring minds want to know.