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My wife and I spent a week at our property up north by the border. It’s about one third in pasture and the rest in timber. I mowed the pastures and reclaimed the roads/trails in the timber. After cutting out trees that had either fallen across the roads or were growing into them I mowed the brush and cleaned them up.

This property belonged to her uncle who lived there as a crusty old bachelor. He passed in late 2007 and my wife inherited the real property and her mother inherited his possessions, including a large collection of well used lever rifles mostly Winchesters. I inherited the task of cleaning up the “collection” of “stuff” he left behind. I hauled a couple dozen loads to the equipment auction and another dozen to the dump. He lived in the absolute definition of a shack which was not livable so we had it demolished. There is a pretty nice metal shop and pole building we kept but had all the rickety loafing sheds, wood shed, pole corrals etc demolished with the shack. I rewarded myself with a few of his guns and tools for my efforts and the rest of the guns went to a local dealer who sold them via gunbroker. All funds received went to my MIL.

Here’s a few pics from this week, unfortunately I didn’t think to take any before pics. You can’t appreciate the difference without seeing it before but you certainly can appreciate how nice it looks now. Funny side story, the rear of the property borders timber land owned by Hancock Timber. When I first got up there last Sunday I noticed there was several trail marking tapes hanging along the property line. On Monday I rode up to the rear gate and heard a metal clanging sound. I’m thinking “WTH”?? Parked and walked up a bit and found a crew marking the property line with angle iron stakes and blazing the trees. Had a nice conversation with the crew and marveled at the timing of us being there at the same time.

Brought the 22’s up with us but no ground squirrels were up yet. Did hear a few but no sightings.

Beautiful property. I hope you get to enjoy it for many years to come.

Nice piece of property with a lot of potential! Great spot for the camper too!

Good ole Washington State big evergreens and plenty of them. Nice property hope you enjoy it. I know I sure would.

The state nickname is “Evergreen State” and it says so on our license plates. My wife and I put the RV pad in last year and it’s located in the general area of the old shack her uncle lived in. You can see the inlet to the old un-permitted septic system next to the concrete blocks. I use this to dump my holding tanks. No drilled well, he pumped creek water from a hand dug well so we have to haul water up. We do have power, we had it re-wired with a new 100 amp service several years ago. He had three or four fuse boxes mounted to a pole outside in the weather. We could just see a fire starting from this mess so had it redone.

We have used the property a bunch except for 2015 thru 2018 when we had my MIL living with us. We were unable to leave her home alone overnight so didn’t use the property at all. It got pretty overgrown but is looking good now. We always go up there in September for a week of morning grouse hunting and afternoon lawn chair naps followed by cocktail hour. We really missed “grouse camp” those years my MIL lived with us. (She passed in early 2019)

Im very familiar with Washington State Hatch. I was born and raised there. Sister still lives on the west side of the cascades. I miss the area but I dont miss any of the traffic on the west side. I have a step daughter who lives in Moxie also.

BigAl52 wrote: ↑

Mon May 04, 2020 12:05 pm

Im very familiar with Washington State Hatch. I was born and raised there. Sister still lives on the west side of the cascades. I miss the area but I dont miss any of the traffic on the west side. I have a step daughter who lives in Moxie also.

I would have to think that Colorado is pretty awesome too. I have only been there once and it was a business trip in December so I didn’t get to enjoy the area. Agreed, that west side traffic is nuts, glad I don’t live over there.

Man Hatchdog, that is some mighty fine property you have there. Like what you're doing. Anchors away!

looks awesome hatch
if you need some help cleaning up those groundhogs you know who to call

what are ya planing next ...maybe a range... ala hickok45

PS I lived on the west side in the 80s ...so glad I moved over to the slow side of the state when I did
..less traffic, mellower pace of life and great people

Spent another week up there last week. Took two shots at a nice fat ground squirrel and missed. Gonna have to take the Marlin 39-A out to the range and check the scope cuz there’s no way it could be me.

We tried to so some ATV’n on the timber land behind but after spending two hours cutting our way into the lower part (lots of downed trees and brush, all small stuff) we gave up. Every time I stopped to cut my wife got swarmed by mosquitoes. It’s a bit of a micro-climate up there with more rain than we get at home. There’s a large pond and two creeks but I have never seen so much water this late in the spring. We’ll go back up in July after it dries out some.

Beautiful and peaceful.