HUNTING ON THE CHURCH RANCH IN FLORIDA

Dear Family,

We traveled to Florida to visit John and Kaley and their new baby, grandchild # 70 who arrived on Christmas Day. The trip was to attend the blessing of the baby in church but we had some other fun things planned. Mom wanted to spend time helping Kaley with th new little guy.

Kaley's uncle Randy is an avid hunter and belongs to a hunting club that leases 20,00 acres to hunt on our church ranch in Florida. Here is a photo of John and Randy on the ranch looking for game.

They don't talk about this much but the church owns a huge chunk of central Florida from Orlando to Coco beach and I am not sure how far north and south. I think it is about 300,000 acres and I can remember when they bought it. My uncle Joesph L. and Elder Henry D. M. bought it about 1947 because they stopped off in New York to visit us before they went down there. Once purchased they sent in the engineering crews and drained swamps and started a cattle ranch on some of it.

Randy hunts on a section called K6 which has cattle. This is 20,000 acres and is the biggest of the 30 hunting leases on the rest of the ranch. There are lots of deer, wild hogs and there are alligators in little puddles of water. The bush is thick and as we drove around the roads, it reminded me of parts of Africa we hunted in the past.

There are 30 hunters in this group who pay $300,000 total a year to lease this hunting property. We drove around the main roads with a 4 wheel drive truck as it had rained heavily and everything was soaked and of course there was no movement of animals. We saw a small buck that was too small to bag. The other way they hunt is with stands and Randy has 30 stands of his own.. these are like the German Hochsitz.

The other way to hunt is on these "Swamp Buggies. These are built on truck chassis, lifted and are about two stories high. The tires are from huge front loaders. We met some of the other hunters in their camp and although they sounded like that guy in the movie, Water Boy, these are successful business men and lawyers who love hunting from these tree stands on wheels. This church ranch is really something!

John and I found a real old fashion raw oyster bar in Orland, the kind my Dad used to take me to in Baltimore. We ate a bucket of oysters and a dozen steamed clams and it was so good. The next day we found another site in Ocala and that one may have been a mistake. In the evening, we went with Kaley's parents to a really nice restaurant and I had fish. Well by 1 AM all the seafood tried exit my body quickly every hour and I was really down. Could not go to church the next day so they decided not to bless the baby this time and I have spent the last four days getting over this seafood binge. We were able to travel home on the plane. Rob and I discussed the antibiotics and he called in a prescription.

Mom visited with Kaley's parents who put on a huge dinner of smoked meats. I can't believe I am well enough to write about all this. We had a great time apart from the above. I had a lot of fun with little Grant. We will probably go down in May for John's graduation from law school. I will probably not eat so much sea food.

Love, Dad and Mom