Summer has arrived in the Illinois whitetail capitol of Pike County! We are hard at work here at Hadley Creek Outfitters, getting ready for the 2016 hunting season. It will be here before we know it!
As usual our summer is jam-packed around here but it’s all exciting work. This is the time of year when we begin working hard on our trail cam program. Capturing trail cam photos is not something that we do haphazardly here at Hadley Creek Outfitters. We take it seriously and we work hard at it. We have a thoughtful process in place and we spend a lot of man-hours, truck miles and fuel to make sure it’s done right.
Look for us to start posting this year’s trail cam photos sometime in mid to late July. We will start a 2016 Hit List on our website (you can still view last year’s 2015 Hit List). Or be sure to follow us on Instagram @hunthadleycreek or on Facebook at Facebook.com/HadleyCreekOutfitters. We will be posting new trail cam photos on those accounts all throughout the season.
This is also a busy time of year for our guides hanging tree stands. With thousands of stands across all of our farms, this is a huge job. Each stand is carefully placed, trees trimmed and shooting lanes meticulously considered. Some of these stands are in proven locations that have produced bucks year after year. But we carefully evaluate all tree stand locations after the season and make changes wherever necessary.
While crops are in the ground, our farm crew still has some food plot work to do as well. Of course the benefit of being a commercial farm operation in addition to a whitetail hunting outfit means that we get to play with the big toys when putting in our food plots! We’ve got a lot of giant green fields going in this year. Many of them are still in our favorite strategic locations, while others are new to take advantage of patterns that we’ve discovered over the past couple of years.
It’s a busy time but we are looking forward to seeing many of you here during the 2016 deer hunting season! We have great things to look forward to here in Pike County, Illinois. If you have questions about an upcoming hunt, please feel free to give us a call at 217-335-3804. Or check out our website for more information on our trophy whitetail hunts.