*Sigh*...


Turkeygirl

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So about 6:00 tonight I head up to try and roost the birds. Rain tapered off. I get to the edge of our woods where I then have to trek across a field to get to the other woods. I see something dark along the edge...about 1/4 mile away. Look through the binocs and watch a gobbler feeding. Well I skirt around and cross the top of the gravel pit....bird had gone in the woods. I thought I heard a turkey fly up but then I heard ducks quaking from somewhere so I thought it was ducks. I circled below where I thought he might go and sat up on this little hill which is near where I thought I was hearing turkeys fly down. I sat there from 6:30-7:40pm and didn't hear any wings beats....do turkeys roost early if the weather has been rainy and cool during the day? So I stand up to get ready to leave and the second I stand up I heard wings and turn behind me and there goes a turkey, I think out of the roost, across towards the other side of a creek...same place the gobbler went last spring when some guy spooked him. I'm leaning towards thinking this is the gobbler I saw in the field. So do you think he will be back? Considering I thought I was hearing birds fly down and he was here tonight, think this is his roosting area?

I didn't see any real fresh tracks in the sand by the gravel pit and now I'm wondering where did the other gobblers go? Do they stick together or break off on their own? There's a few places they could be and I just don't know where to be trying to roost them as they aren't gobbling to anything...

I'm not going out tomorrow morning but I will in the evening and take a walk over to the one corn field where there was a bunch of tracks last weekend... I feel discombobulated right now....:confused: I JUST WANT A BIRD!! ;):eek::rolleyes:

I'm losing Friday afternoon through Saturday evening because of the backpacking trip but I'll have all day Sunday and Monday morning and Monday evening. I think Monday morning I'll go to the boss' land to see if I hear gobbles again, just so I have a back-up spot...

Sorry for the long post. Any encouragement/advice is welcome.

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Concentrate on the boss's land. Get there at 5am Sunday, and sit and listen until about 7am. Don't get up and move around. Find a good central spot and sit. Then go back to the same spot Sunday evening. Bring a chair. Go in around 7pm and sit until 8:30-9pm. That is when it is dark. Bring your owl hoot and only hoot at dark, not 7:30, not 8 because it is not dark yet. And only hoot if you hear nothing. Go back to the same spot Monday am again at 5 am and listen. Im telling you the birds around here do not gobble every day. Go back in there Monday evening same as Sunday. Try and get a good location on the birds in the am and be in the same area in the PM to get a roost location.

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Sure he'll be back. He won't remember a thing. I made one nervously opening day and the next morning he pitched down and went right by the tree I was set up on the eve before when he got the spooks.

Turkeys will fly up all times of the day and yes more often when the weather is bad. Just the other morn, I was hunting National Forest Land and spy a big ol' longbeard feeding 'bout twenty yards from this house surrounded by NF property. He was twenty yards from their back deck. His big ol' beard teased me a bit and I decided to give him a go even though I felt a bit uncomfortable with him so close to the house, but heck if he'd stepped one foot in the boundary, I'd taken him home. I eased up above him, did a yelp, he looked, went back to feeding. Waited a while, watchin' his paintbrush sweep the yard as he fed. Yelped three more times and the misses of the house came out on the porch talkin' on the phone directly above him. He looks at me, looks at her and decides up is the safest place. Flew up and roosted in a pine 'bout twenty yards inside the boundary. I left as I'd just soon give him a try some morning. I think the turkeys think they have found a sanctuary from all the hunters on the WMA and NF lands around the home cuz I've seen lots of birds in their yard.

Most gobblers break off during mating. Some may go together and some may let a jake tag along.

Good luck to you turkeygirl.

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Thanks for the input. I'd really like to have these turkeys patterned down as I'd prefer to hunt here by home, but I think tomorrow morning I'll go up to the boss' land before work. We might get rain later so tonight I think I'll check some other fields here by home, maybe sit down by the swamp again or something....just not near where I spooked that bird.

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