05 spring turkey season (my first) over now (for me)
thanks, arts....
Hunted 4 straight weekends. Got 2 birds, so batting .500 for weekends spent to birds taken. Oh, and when I measured that beard, it wasn't 7 or 8, it came out 9.25" measured from the very base, or 9.0" measured from where it would have started outside the feathers. So would you consider that a "trophy" or not? Put it with the feathers on a little mount with pic, or wait for a bigger one?
Lessons learned, or so I think (the first one is applicable to any hunting season, or any time spent alone in a remote area for that matter):
1. Always park your vehicle up on top of a little hill or slope, pointing downwards at the precipice, so that if you leave your keys in the on position all night like a moron, to recharge your flashlights using the cigarette lighter charger, you'll be able to push the the pickup and jump start it - only works for standards, of course. 3 mile walk and friendly neighbor got me a jump start, to get home in time for work Monday.
2. Tent blinds work well in concealing your movement - dem turkeys can see good, and the movement from striking your pan call is plenty for them to see, and they take off, if not in a blind. I tried both ways. Oh, and just the existence of the blind will NOT make Rios spooky. Heck, at one point, after taking a late morning nap, I woke up about 11 in the back of my pickup truck, popped my head up, and off ran a flock of 6-8 hens not 40 yards from my white pickup, in plain view. It's *movement* that spooks them, not out-of-place items.
3. Those jakes will indeed come in silent after the gobbling stops, between 8:00 am - 2:30 pm, maybe later even, so keep calling and wait if you don't mind taking a jake.
4. It's definitely definitely best to find either a roost and accompanying fly-down area, or a strutting/display area, if you can, because if you don't get one right when the fly down, then most if not all of the big ones immediately get henned up. So do some scouting beforehand, and walk around listening for them gobbling up on the roost at dusk, to find the roost. And artsmom, you're right, the fly-down clearing was much farther than I thought it would be - there was a smallish clearing (20 yards across), not 30 or 40 yards from the roost, that they passed/flew over, to reach the larger clearing about 70 or 75 yards from the roosting area, which was also a much bigger clearing. But then again, since I'm talking about that successful hunt described above, they may have only passed over the smaller one on that day because they were following the leader, and the leader may have seen my jake decoy and flown farther than usual to go attack him - I dunno, but I *think* that the larger, further clearing was their usual fly down area. Yes, Lokmdown, it was comedy watching that big boy attacking my decoy. He knocked it down and then stomped on it a few times.
5. Like deer, they are pretty darned unpredictable...I thought I had them patterned after last weekend, but I didn't...they changed up the daily pattern entirely, that I had witnessed the week before. This may have been due to this one pond being almost dried up, which they had previously made their way to at around 7:30, or may have been due to colder weather, or maybe just cuz they felt like changing - dunno. But they DO seem to seek out water within an hour or two after flying down from the roost. They roam widely all over, so if you want a big one, you're better off walking and walking, stopping occasionally to hit a locater call, trying to get them to gobble, than sitting in one spot. As I said, if you're happy with a jake, however, staying put might work. In my very limited experience, the barred owl hoot, though it doesn't work every time, or even half the time, works occasionally, and much better than a crow call, or my fake sounding gobble from a box call. The crow call never worked. The barred owl hoot, and a hen yelp both worked occasionally to elicit a gobble - the hen yelp worked the best of course, even after prime time was over - even in the afternoon. Even though hens aren't yelping at that time, the yelp works as a shock gobble (whether it *ALSO* has the effect of letting the gobbler know you're probably not real, since "other" hens are NOT yelping then - I have no idea). Oh yeah, the coyotes howling & yelping a half hour or so before dusk worked the best of all in eliciting some gobbles - they seemed unable to keep silent at the coyotes, so you might want to pick up a coyote howl call as well.
6. Oh yeah, if you're ever hunting cows, bring your turkey decoys. At least 3 times, a cow stopped to sniff my decoys. Some cows are fascinated by turkeys that don't run off. Seriously, although I cursed the cows, the cows are truly a blessing in disguise I think, because since they roam all over, the turkeys get used to having sounds crashing through the woods after dark. This allows you to go out after dark to set up a blind near the roost, as well as make your way into your blind/setup before dawn without spooking them off the roost. One morning, the stupid cows were within 30 yards of the roost, unbeknownst to me, and I scared them off in the dark about quarter til 6 one morning - a few of them crashed right through, probably within 20 yards or so of the edge of the roosting area, making a hellacious noise, and it still didn't scare off the turkeys.
7. I'm not sure, but I could swear that once you shoot a bird near a certain set of decoys, then those same birds that are present and witness that will be scared off by those same decoys. I never got a turkey from this one flock to come near those decoys that I used for the successul hunt described; and at one point I literally saw the flock come in, see the decoys, and actually *run* off at a 90 degree angle away from the decoys, just a soon as they rounded the corner, putting the decoys in their sight. Although I may just be paranoid, I'm definitely going to have 2 sets of 2 different brands of decoys, that look a little different, next year. I'm going to have 2 different sets of: [2 hens, 1 jake], in the future.
I'll probably think of some more...
