(by Mike Grossman)
Iowa offers whitetail deer hunting at the highest level available anywhere. I feel blessed to have such a gift available for me and my family to enjoy. Below is the account of my most recent trophy taken 45 minutes from the Des Moines metro area on 11-20-09 at 8:05AM.
I have been pretty bad with the story sharing this year. I think that as I invest more time to this sport the sharing on the net is one of the things that will lose out. This buck entered my world in June of this past summer as he bumped in front of one of my cameras while I was working on a nearby food plot. Since I had never seen this guy before I added a camera to the back of the same tree he passed earlier, just to see if I could be missing something. Two of the trail camera pictures I captured are featured in this post.

My son Nate and I watched him in the beans in September and even though he was a much smaller net deer than the other he was with he really pulled your eye his way. My son had to make me stop staring and pointed out the other, much higher grossing buck. I think I would have ignored the other deer completely without him shaking me out of my trance.
As the season progressed both bucks remained visible and I kept adjusting my setup accordingly. At the same time I was working other quality bucks the same way on other properties. My action was good all season and I have never passed on the quality of bucks that I allowed to walk this year. Part of my growing in the sport experience, I guess?
In the end I became more aggressive with my setups. On November 20th, the morning of the harvest, I backpacked in and set up in a funnel bedding area and just as I had hoped the bucks where alone and seeking. He was the third buck to work through and I recognized him almost immediately even through the thick brush. I remained seated because I felt he was going to be in the right place for the shot and I wanted to avoid the extra movement. As I grabbed my bow and removed my sight pin cover (small panic since this should have been removed at first light) I relaxed and thought about the shot. My body shook briefly from nerves and I got back to business. He stepped out perfectly and stopped right on cue, after the shot he bounded off a few yards unaware that he was dead on his feet or what had just happened. He walked a little further and tipped over.
I shot a quick email to a group I had just been communicating with 5 minute before the shot. The first communication ended with “much to my disappointment I was able to finish this email without being stop by a deer”. The follow up was “I just shot my target buck!” A message from one of my buddies in the group called him “a text book buck”. I agreed. I think I will call him “Text”.
@Grossman_Mike

(by Todd Omundson)
I sell Real Estate for a living, but my interest in real estate goes way beyond being my source of income. I have loved building things since I was a kid. I built a couple of tree houses and I used to build all kinds of things around the farm I grew up on, including stalls for my horses, a chicken house, dog houses and fences.

As an adult I love being around construction sites. I like watching the stages of construction and learning new skills and seeing tricks of the trade. Some people look at a mountain and see it as a challenge; I see a rundown home in need of rehabilitation and I see my Mt Everest. I take great pride in my work and enjoy the surprise of my friends and family when they see the transition of my diamonds in the ruff. I believe my interest in the construction of homes makes me a better REALTOR. I know how things should be and I can spot a problem or potential problem, such as common cause of wet a basement’s negative grade, plunged or sagging gutters or lack of drain extensions. As much knowledge as I have I am not offering my expertise in replacement for a whole house inspection. Home inspectors have been trained and prepare extensive reports. I highly recommend everyone have a home inspections done, a good inspector can save you thousands of dollars on hidden or not easily identifiable repairs.

I know construction materials and I can tell my clients if components are cheap fixes or quality. Some flippers and self-proclaimed handy men and women, will use the most inexpensive grades of finish materials. They may look great when new, but will not last as long as a more expensive product. You need to look at the inside of the cabinets to see how they are put together, feel the carpet to see how heavy and dense it is. Inspect the wood work make sure it is real wood. The base corners and miter joints around doors and windows should be tight and not full of wood filler. Please shoot me any questions you might have on fixer-uppers on my Twitter account.

@ToddOmundson