2022 spring turkey

[Shangobango]

Heard two on the roost this morning. Both about as far as we could hear away. We are set up on a ridgetop just lounging and listening waiting for the woods to clear out some. There is rain in the area and more about an hour out. Not trying to get terribly far from the truck until it clears later in the morning. My son is snoring… I’d take a pic if I didn’t think he would push me off the hill.

 

[Stocker]

I’ve had eyes on a group for a week or so now. I’ve been to busy to hunt. Today the sun is finally shining, gonna set a blind up this afternoon and hopefully arrow one tomorrow.

 

[Gellar]

View attachment 217618
Got bird #2 yesterday afternoon.

That is a really pretty bird! Maybe it’s just the light but the feathers on his back are really iridescent! Congratulations!

 

[Gellar]

I’ve had eyes on a group for a week or so now. I’ve been to busy to hunt. Today the sun is finally shining, gonna set a blind up this afternoon and hopefully arrow one tomorrow. View attachment 217733

Any more posts like this and as the OP of this thread I will have to block you!

 

[Gellar]

I got out well before sunrise this morning to “listening point” i didn’t hear any turkeys so I went for a drive. There is something about being the first to leave tracks in an area after a fresh snow. I heard a few gobbles and ended up seeing quite a few tracks and birds about an hour after sunrise where they had been strutting on the forest road. I marked all the locations on OnX and wrote them down in the turkey journal. The season starts on April 11.

 

[Stocker]

Literally right now off my deck. There’s 4 more gobblers strutting in the cedars………

 

[Stocker]

6 total toms in the group. My timeline on hunting them just got bumped up. Going to set up now. Wife’s plans have been thrown out the window. A tom is worth a night on the couch right?

 

[Nick87]

6 total toms in the group. My timeline on hunting them just got bumped up. Going to set up now. Wife’s plans have been thrown out the window. A tom is worth a night on the couch right?

It's like this, you were headed to the couch at some point anyway right. Might as well make it count.

 

[N2TRKYS]

That is a really pretty bird! Maybe it’s just the light but the feathers on his back are really iridescent! Congratulations!

Thank you very much. He was a pretty bird. My scale said 20lbs, but he felt heavier than that. Especially, on that mile walk back to the 4Runner.

 

[Knight.54]

I spent some time scouting around NEastern NC yesterday.
It was opening day for our youth.
Heard plenty of birds saw a few out strutting. Looking forward to next Saturday!

 

[Stocker]

Turkeys 1 me 0.

Got on that group yesterday but they went in the trees to feed to get outta the wind. Almost impossible to call them out or stalk them in the timber this time of year.

Set up this morning where they came through yesterday. The hens flew down and took them the opposite direction. I made a mile loop to get set up in front of them only to have them fly across a creek 100 yards behind me and head to a cornfield. I got on a second group, called 4 jakes in immediate and they demolished my decoys. When they left I snuck out to fix the decoys and got busted by a hen I didn’t see.


I wouldn’t feel so bad if I’d just started hunting, but I’ve been doing it my whole life and to suck as bad as I do at it after all these years is almost a miracle. I think I might take up knitting.

 

[TheGreek]

Headed to SE Illinois next weekend to chase some Turks on a public land spot I know decently well. Fingers crossed we don’t mess up our opportunities. Like we did last year!

 

[DRS]

Only a few more days to go.

 

[Chad Gus]

Been seeing and hearing toms on a daily basis now, still 3 weeks till the first season starts here

 

[mdeerjunkie]

I was able to obtain private land along the south platte for turkey this year. First time ever hunting private land. Pretty excited. Season here is only 5 days away.

 

[Pucky Freak]

Scouting spot 1: 2 turkey droppings.
Scouting spot 2: 16 birds, including 7 toms

Worked my way up on the target bottom to top, 15 yards. Last 2 shots were right on the money.

 

[Shangobango]

Our Louisiana WMA turkey lottery hunt came to a close with no shots fired. Was still a pretty awesome hunt.

We never did turn up anything Saturday. Heard the 2 gobblers from afar and that was it.

My son had worked a full 12 hours Friday and then got up at 3:30 A.M. on Saturday and then hunted all day. He had to be at work bright and early on Monday. He decided to sleep in on Sunday. This is understandable especially given the issues we have had finding turkeys the last few years. That was his misfortune because Sunday from 0630 until after fly up at dusk I was on turkeys. It was the best turkey hunt I think I ever had for almost nonstop all day action. Was on 2 to 4 gobblers all day. Had turkeys within a few hundred yards all day. Was quite a time.

It started out as a tom and a Jake before fly down. They had a hen or two with them from the sound of it. I deployed my decoy and got set up. I made one tree yelp and a few soft clucks. They flew down to the hens that were roosted nearby and made their way to the south a few hundred yards. I took that opportunity to sneak up a couple hundred yards in the direction they had headed. I thought they had moved away but they moved just to the other side of a finger ridge making it sound like they had moved farther away. I got ready to move up some more and a gobble sounded not 100 yards away and 100 feet or so above me on the ridge. I was lucky he gobbled when he did or I would have walked into them. I froze by a big pine and listened to the tom and Jake drum and gobble on top while I watched a hen feeding on the slope about 50 or 60 yards away. They eventually made their way further south. In the meantime there was two other gobblers closing in, one from the east and one from the south. I was caught in the bottom and had to make a move. I crossed the small creek that followed the toe of the slope and made my way onto the slope of a draw coming off the ridge. I didn’t feel like I could deploy my decoy because of the terrain and being so tight into the turkeys and not knowing just where they all were, so I tucked in next to a big oak and let out a soft yelp. I don’t think deploying the decoy would have made a difference though, at least on the big tom, more to come on that later. What ensued after that one non aggressive soft yelp was 4 gobblers trying their darndest to out do each other for 5 straight minutes without showing any interest in actually coming to my call. I watched the big tom for a few minutes strutting on a bench that protruded out into the creek bottom about 90 yards away. Another gobbler was on a finger ridge immediately across the draw from the little hump I was set up on the side of. Never saw him but he was gobbling his fool head off and I could hear him drumming. The Jake and the other gobbler were further south on the main ridge. The big tom finally came within 40 yards soon after I had watched him strutting on the bench This was at 0930 or 0945. He came walking silently walking up the very bottom of the drain in the draw looking for the hen he had heard cluck and yelp there 25 or 30 minutes before. Could only see his head and there was brush between us for most of the time. No shot. I had only yelped 3 times total in that 3 hour or so window between fly down and seeing the gobbler. Mixed in a few clucks and purrs every once in awhile. Very unaggressive calling.

The gobblers and hens eventually made their way further south. I took this opportunity to get up higher on the ridge where I could hear better. I sat against a big pine and had a cliff bar and some water. After my snack I let out a fairly loud and long yelp. The jake literally came running down the top of the ridge and almost ran right over me. He threw on the brakes when he got to where he thought the hen had been, strutted a little, finally saw me 5 yards away, and hauled butt out of there.

In the meantime the big tom and another tom had made there way back north coming up the creek bottom as revealed by the gobbles I was now hearing down below and about 300 yards away. I moved downhill in their direction onto the side of the draw created by one part of the bench the gobbler had been strutting on earlier that paralleled the main ridge, with the finger ridge angling of the main ridge at almost 90 degrees from the bench creating somewhat of a bowl with one narrow path into the main creek bottom. I felt hidden enough to deploy the decoy, though I wish I hadn't. I clucked and purred and two gobblers sounded off simultaneously, one directly on the other side of the bench in front of me and one further to the right. I waited about 10 minutes and made a soft yelp. I got no answer so I just sat there for about 15 minutes. I looked to my right at the head of this draw and saw the big tom walk out and look straight at the decoy, head held erect. I had set up expecting him to pull his walk the drain in the bottom of the draw routine again but this time he chose to take the head of the little draw as to have a view of the entire draw. He was 60 yards away with a clear line of sight and I would have had to make a swing to the right and make a quick shot. No thanks. So I watched him stare down that decoy for about 5 seconds hoping he would come check it out. He didn't. He turned and walked directly away.

I played cat and mouse with the big tom for the rest of the day. I heard him and a couple of hens fly up at dusk. He let out one lone gobble on the roost that evening. I thought Monday he would be in trouble.

I woke up Monday to a stiff breeze from the south, increasing clouds, and falling barometric pressure. Not a recipe for a lot of gobbling in my experience. Last day of a 3 day hunt so I was within a 150 yards of the big toms roost well before daylight. Long story short is that he gobbled 3 or 4 times from the roost compared to 40 the morning before. Some of this I think was the weather and some was that he wasn't being egged on by his buddy who I heard gobbling back on the roost from the previous morning about a half mile away.

The big tom flew down and stuck to his hens with very little gobbling. That lasted all morning. I heard him gobble the last time at about 1300. I had followed him approx. 3/4 of a mile since fly down. I called it a hunt at about 1500 because I had a ton of stuff to do at home and the weather was making a turn for the worse.

I feel like this was the tom that I heard the one youth hunter on the week before. It was very close to the same location. Whoever was calling was doing a ton of it and the gobbler was gobbling his head off. I think he got an education on turkey hunters and not just from this season. He will be a tough one for someone to kill I think.

All in all a great hunt. Got to spend a day in the woods with my son. Got to hunt a place I had never hunted in a very unique terrain. I learned a lot about the place. I feel like if I had known the terrain and the way the turkeys used it a little better I may could have turned the tables on that big tom. I sure had it reinforced for the 100th time how difficult extremely pressured turkeys can be to hunt. They sure are a challenge and they sure are fun.

There weren't that many birds on this place and it used to be the destination for the public land turkey hunter around here. I regret not applying and hunting it in it's prime. This hunt sure did one thing. It made me determined to do all I can to advocate for the wild turkey here at home. Some of my fondest memories have been made with family and friends in the turkey woods. It all started when I was 9 years old when me and my grandpa doubled on gobblers. My grandpa told the story the rest of his life how I almost beat the shot fired from my single shot .410 to that gobbler and he was scared to death I was gonna get spurred trying to wrangle that flopping sucker. It culminated when I called my son's first gobbler in for him when he was barely a teen. Now 35 years after shooting my first Louisiana gobbler the turkeys here are in real trouble. Nesting success and poult survival are dismal. I have a lot more reading to do and have to figure out how to make a difference.

I will be hunting on the WMA where I cut my public land turkey hunting teeth this coming weekend. I don't have high hopes for finding birds. There are a fraction of the birds on the place from it's peak in the late 90's and early 2000's. It will be fun either way. I hope I am wrong and the turkey flock has expanded since my last hunt there couple years ago. One way to find out.

 

[Gellar]

@Shangobango
Sounds like a fantastic hunt, albeit unsuccessful. Good luck this next weekend!
I think a dozen duke dog proof traps would go along ways for nesting success of turkey.

 

[jt13]

Couple weeks yet until turkey season opens here. I picked up some discounted Browning TSS (1 3/4oz, 3in, 12ga, #7&9) a few months back and tried it through a few different choke tubes yesterday @ 50 yds.

#1. Patternmaster Code Black Duck (+/-.710)

#2. Factory Full (.695)

#3. XX Full Turkey (.668)

 

[Shangobango]

@Shangobango
Sounds like a fantastic hunt, albeit unsuccessful. Good luck this next weekend!
I think a dozen duke dog proof traps would go along ways for nesting success of turkey.

It was a great hunt. One I will always look back on.

Trapping sure won't hurt.

I have 10 dozen Duke DP's. Another 6 dozen duke 1.5 coils, 4 dozen 220 body grips, 8 dozen 280 body grips, etc. I am going to have to get over my aversion to trapping with little to no market for the critters I am trapping. As someone who was raised with the mentality of trapping being a business and having trapped as part of their income in the past, that is fairly tall hurdle. Throw in my work schedule and, well, you get the picture. Got to find a way to make it happen.