Mother nature fights back - 2020 edition

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plant.one
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Mother nature fights back - 2020 edition

Post by plant.one »

Went north this weekend to do some property maintenance, sweep out the blinds for the upcoming firearm season and cut some standing dead ash for firewood.

Got up there and as we got setup to clean the west fence of fallen branches and repost the no hunting/trespassing signs we discovered a large tree top on the roof of one of our blinds. First time in over 20 years we've had more than a small wrist thick sized branch land on any of our 24 permanent blinds.

A large canopy height maple broke off about 25' up and all 3 tops landed bullseye style right in the roof.

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The roof was unsalvageable - every board used to construct it took some level of damage - but the rest of the blind amazingly survived. The back left corner post was driven down about 2" but the structure is still otherwise sound.

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The shingle layer - somehow- didn't get pierced and there's almost no water damage on the inside.


We went into town and bought a dewalt 20v pole saw and using only a single 5aH battery (amazing tool! Worth way more than the $150 they sell for!) removed most of the limbs to reduce weight/ tangle and then pulled each section off the roof one at a time with the tractor. Unbelievable how well that pole saw worked and how efficient it was on power consumption!!!

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Roof was replaced with metal roof sheeting and the blind is now dried in and will be cleaned out, sealed against insects and mice/squirrels again this coming weekend. will get some more pics on the repair when we finish the cleanup - just too wet and tired to care when we were all done.

For reference this blind is 9' to the floor and the front peak is just under 19' in the air, and had a 8x8 roof on it.









went over to quickly tack some more insulation into my deer shack to find this mess inside

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appears my door upper/lower corner latches came loose and a squirrel somehow wedged himself in and got trapped. EVERYTHING was on the floor - including the heater and latched storage tote - not to mention all the insulation i installed last year on the lower half of the walls :/

didn't have the cleanup supplies necessary to deal with it, and we were wiped from getting that tree off the other blind so i'm leaving it for this coming weekend.





Needless to say - the firewood got put in the back burner, but we left the trailer there and intend to go back up this weekend for round 2...
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BobinNC
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Re: Mother nature fights back - 2020 edition

Post by BobinNC »

Yes nature can be a mother......
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gds
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Re: Mother nature fights back - 2020 edition

Post by gds »

Yeah that is a rough one for sure.
Yes, I am a Baptist, and yes I carry a gun. You might think I carry a gun because I don't trust God. Well you would be wrong. I have complete faith in my Lord. It is mankind I have no trust in
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plant.one
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Re: Mother nature fights back - 2020 edition

Post by plant.one »

Went back North and treated my truck like a proper truck for the weekend.

Dad picked massive standing dead ash and two more leaners that needed to be drug out to load up some firewood for my cousin.

We loaded (6) 14' main trunk sections around 12" with the largest topping out at 15" diameter, with 4 reasonable sized branches also at 14' long. We figure >2k but <3k. Trailer rated for 3500 lbs. Thank God for the bucket loader and the forks.

Towed like a dream down the highway. Smooth and seamless. Coolant was at 194 the whole run and the trans never went over 153 - and that was passing a slow camper on the highway. The remainder of the trip was running in the 143-145 range.

Ran 12.6 mpg with the load on the highway. Nice to know what that number looks like with some real weight back behind her.

This is the tip of the iceberg for wood up there.... we could make another 10 loads like this and not dent the firewood supply there.





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Still some nice colors but the weather did a number on half of them already.

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Also got the deer shack cleaned and re-insulated. The new insulation - just ¼" accordion foam but still a nice addition. it will need a coat of some flat black paint come next season... but... I'm ready to hunt here when our firearm season kicks off


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3d printed slide latches will hopefully help keep me critter free in the future and not have to deal with the mess we found last weekend again.

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Reloading info shared is based on experiences w/ my guns. Be safe and work up your loads from published data. Web data may not be accurate/safe.
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