We were hoping to be at Houston Draw twice in October but we got rained out the first weekend and were not able to reschedule it. 

On October 24 the Arizona Elk Society headed to the forest for our last project of the season. We were heading up to Houston Draw to start a new fence and put in some erosion control structures. As we got up to our site, we set up camp quickly and headed down to the project site. Our goal for Friday was to complete the one rock dams and to get all of our corner posts set so we could run string for the rest of them on Saturday. We broke into 2 crews and went to work. When we tried to start our concrete mixer, we had rented, it wouldn’t start, so we had to mix concrete by hand in a wheelbarrow. We did finish the structures and get all of 7 of our corner posts set.

Saturday morning, we had a few more volunteers show up. We were a small but mighty crew of 6, and had lots to accomplish. We worked hard throughout the morning and got one complete side of the fence posts set and concreted by lunch. After lunch, we headed back out. There were some holes that our auger wouldn’t get to, so we had to dig them by hand. We finished the two end posts of the fence quickly and went to work on the other side. By the time darkness rolled around, we only had 8 more posts left. We called it a day and headed back to camp to eat and lounge around the fire.

Sunday morning, we got up and packed up camp before heading back to the jobsite. We wanted to finish the rest of the posts, and within a couple of hours, we had done just that. All total, we set 52 posts, and this project will sit over the winter before we go back to hang panels next spring. With all the challenges we had from this past weekend’s project, our crew worked hard and as a team to accomplish a ton of work!