Guess who "won?"
Seriously, I whipped his ass. I suppose now he'll stop nattering at me to go plink with him.
#men
The Lady of Holly Tree Manor
PS. Note to any copperhead living nearby - I will find you. There is nowhere you can slither to escape me and Walther.
We went back and forth a bit but eventually concluded that a stack of dead tree trunks strategically placed at the base of the hill would stop any bullet that went wide of the target. So will the hillside but we had the option of stacking the deadwood or burning it, and we chose to stack the solid lengths. Some were too far gone and those went to the burn pile. And some of those dead tree trunks are there temporarily and will end up as firewood in the stove some cold winter day.
It may seem strange to some that we want a designated place to practice, but practice makes sure you can hit what you're aiming at - like the friendly raccoons and the not-so-friendly copperheads. Believe me when I say I'm more of a threat to society when I get behind the wheel of my car than when I'm target shooting.
Putting in a range is a lot of hard, physical work. There's no way we could do it without having the John Deere 1023 with a Brush Crusher grapple. While Himself was running the tractor, I was lounging on the John Deere x370 shooting a few videos. I managed to piece them together and get them up on the YouTube channel.
One thing I'm rather sure of is that I'll never make a good videographer.
The Lady of Holly Tree Manor
We are never without dead brush that needs to be burned. Air pollution, you cry! So are airplanes, I say! If you can pollute on your way to exotic vacations, I can burn brush. Didn't think of that, did you?
My house and yard are an oasis surrounded by woods, which are part of my property. For many years the southwestern corner was designated as our "wilderness" area or sort of a bird sanctuary. Unfortunately, the local critters have become too comfortable being too close to the house. We've been waging a war with the local raccoon and we decided his cover has to go. We are cleaning up the wilderness area.
This job wouldn't be possible if we hadn't gotten the Brush Crusher. The grapple is able to lift and carry large pieces of downed trees and drop them directly on the burn pile. It's amazing. How different the manor would look if we'd had the tractor and grapple twenty-five years ago before cancer first entered our lives and his health began to decline.
But there is little to be gained wishing the past to be different. We are here today and we do what we can today. I look out the windows of my sunroom office and am amazed at the transformation taking shape after only two days. I'm very happy with it. We still need to do a little weed-whacking and move some large rocks to the stone fence, but it will get done. One of us will take the old Husquvarna mower in for a finer chopping of small sticks. This fall, I'll sow a lot of deep shade variety grass seed and see what we get in the spring. We'll finish our shooting range, but that's for another blog entry. 
Google Earth view
The manor has long had a park-like feel to it, and this will add to our enjoyment of the property. Well, it won't make Rocket the Raccoon very happy to get the eviction notice, but I don't care.
Take that! you little varmint!
Or should we thank him for giving us the motivation to clear that section of the manor so WE can enjoy it?
Nope.
The Lady of Holly Tree Manor
