HOW RURAL IS RURAL?

Eric Krewson said:

I lived in Muscle Shoals while I was working for the power company, nice subdivision but no room for a shop and only a small garden. I built bows out in the garage, at least 50 of them, and thought "one day I will have a "real" shop".

My wife was always looking for us a more rural place closer to her family's land in Greenhill Al about 20 miles away. Every time she announced "I found us a place" I would look at it and find a major flaw in the location or the house. One day she said it again, I thought it would be another wild goose chase but drove over to look anyway. It was a house being built at the end of a dead-end road about 5 miles out of town, the builder had it in the dry, there was room for a shop and a huge garden plus it backed up to hundereds of acres of forest land.

The house we looked at was full of folk planning to buy it, it didn't take me more than a few minutes to realize I better move fast if I wanted the place. The builder was on sight, I asked what he wanted for the house, he said $184,000 which seemed out of my price range but I figured if I sold my paid for house in Muscle Shoals I could swing it. I told him I wanted the house; he said "let's go draw up a contract "and we did. While we were signing the papers the phone in his office rang, he told the caller "Sorry, but I am in the process of selling the house right now", the caller wanted to sign a contract on the house.

I have the house and 4 acres of woods, A couple of years after I moved in, I had a 28X30 shop built, half for tractor, yard and garden stuff and half for that "real" shop I had wanted for so long.

I love my shop;

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My wife died 9 years ago; I sold the camper after she passed, going out alone wasn't for me.

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I never hunted deer on my land until the last couple of years when getting old age body parts fixed limited my mobility temporally. On a good year with a good acorn crop I may see 50 deer on my land, lately I have been putting a few of them in the freezer. I have planted a food plot for the deer for at least 15 years just to watch the deer, now I hunt it some. I hunt with traditional archery equipment and B/P mostly, if the freezer is empty at the end of the season the modern stuff comes out. The deer become mostly nocturnal a few weeks after the deer season starts.

It seemed strange at first hunting 50-75 yards from the house but I have grown to like it, since I had my hip replaced, I can't drag a deer anymore, my tractor with a front-end

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Eric Krewson said:

loader sure comes in handy for this task.

Here is the view from one of my tree stands below my house, you can see my house in the background.

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The hollow below my house where the deer travel;

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My food plot from a ladder stand I have below the house.

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Billy Boy said:

We lived so far in the sticks that the hootie owls slept with the chickens and some folk thought that Grover Cleveland was president….. We have since moved to town, so, who is president?

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Eric Krewson said:

I lived in Muscle Shoals while I was working for the power company, nice subdivision but no room for a shop and only a small garden. I built bows out in the garage, at least 50 of them, and thought "one day I will have a "real" shop".

My wife was always looking for us a more rural place closer to her family's land in Greenhill Al about 20 miles away. Every time she announced "I found us a place" I would look at it and find a major flaw in the location or the house. One day she said it again, I thought it would be another wild goose chase but drove over to look anyway. It was a house being built at the end of a dead-end road about 5 miles out of town, the builder had it in the dry, there was room for a shop and a huge garden plus it backed up to hundereds of acres of forest land.

The house we looked at was full of folk planning to buy it, it didn't take me more than a few minutes to realize I better move fast if I wanted the place. The builder was on sight, I asked what he wanted for the house, he said $184,000 which seemed out of my price range but I figured if I sold my paid for house in Muscle Shoals I could swing it. I told him I wanted the house; he said "let's go draw up a contract "and we did. While we were signing the papers the phone in his office rang, he told the caller "Sorry, but I am in the process of selling the house right now", the caller wanted to sign a contract on the house.

I have the house and 4 acres of woods, A couple of years after I moved in, I had a 28X30 shop built, half for tractor, yard and garden stuff and half for that "real" shop I had wanted for so long.

I love my shop;

View attachment 211471

My wife died 9 years ago; I sold the camper after she passed, going out alone wasn't for me.

View attachment 211467

I never hunted deer on my land until the last couple of years when getting old age body parts fixed limited my mobility temporally. On a good year with a good acorn crop I may see 50 deer on my land, lately I have been putting a few of them in the freezer. I have planted a food plot for the deer for at least 15 years just to watch the deer, now I hunt it some. I hunt with traditional archery equipment and B/P mostly, if the freezer is empty at the end of the season the modern stuff comes out. The deer become mostly nocturnal a few weeks after the deer season starts.

It seemed strange at first hunting 50-75 yards from the house but I have grown to like it, since I had my hip replaced, I can't drag a deer anymore, my tractor with a front-end loader sure comes in handy for this task.

Here is the view from one of my tree stands below my house, you can see my house in the background.

View attachment 211468

The hollow below my house where the deer travel;

View attachment 211469

My food plot from a ladder stand I have below the house.

View attachment 211470

Click to expand...

Chris Moen said:

To quote my now deceased old friend J T, "I would never live in a place where I can't shoot out the front door and p--s out the back!"

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Chris Moen said:

To quote my now deceased old friend J T, "I would never live in a place where I can't shoot out the front door and p--s out the back!"

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Stumpkiller said:

We live on 20 acres in East Bug Nut, NY (about the middle of the state 20 miles above PA). Our post office is nine miles away (the postman, Mark, turns around in our "U" driveway and goes to our church). Maybe 12 houses on five miles of a ridge road. I have a 20' x 40' barn, one acre pasture where we used to raise sheep. Have chicken coops for up to 30 birds and a 200 yard cleared walk-to shooting range in the 17 +/- acre wooded portion of our property. Two creeks, 1,800 sq feet of garden, heat & hot-water from either fuel oil or a wood boiler and back-up wood stove. Also a 7,000W gasoline generator I can tie in to the house for those times the power if off more than three days (about bi-annually). Have taken many whitetail and one fallow deer(!) that was an escapee from an illegal herd kept about six miles away that had a "fence mishap" just before the DEC raided them. My property backs into a wooded hill of 5 x 8 miles of woods with no homes or roads. That's why I chose to settle here. Great neighbors who are all shooters or hunters and obliging to "the noise" of target shooting . . . or the occasional coyote shot off the back deck. Spent 25 years of our marriage on a small one acre "suburb" lot and this was what we craved. Been here 18 years.

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TDM said:

We've lived in the same home in Louisiana for almost 40 years. 6 acres all surrounded by woods a mile and half from our very small town. It’s all pines for the most part, poor habitat. But my wife told me she saw a doe on our gravel road today coming home from church. Our land in Mississippi is 160 acres of mostly (90%) good hardwoods. Both my east and west boundaries are deep feeder creeks feeding into a live, fast flowing main creek which is my northern boundary. I have almost a 1/2 mile on the main creek. White sand bars and bream, bass, & catfish. There are a couple of families living within a mile or so to the east. But to the west, north, & south there’s nothing but woods and clear cuts for 6-7 miles, even then there may one house then more woods. This is where I’m happy and where I spend most of my time. Luckily my wife and family love it too. I’m very blessed to have but I worked hard many years to get it.
I have deer, turkey, bobcats, red fox, a few coyotes, and the occasional young Boar hog wandering through. And the usual raccoons, possums, armadillos, squirrels, but very few rabbits. Closest town is 14 miles away. The county is as large as any other average county in the US, but to total population is less than 12,000. So it’s pretty rural.

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