I haven't hunted many places in virginia but the few i have the gobblers do alot of talking right at flyup, some birds i have heard gobble over 30 times going to the roost and once there. This is different from my experience in Georgia and north carolina, once in a while you might get a gobble at dusk, usually before flyup, and very rare is the opportunity to actually have one respond once in the tree. Is this your experience too? Does anybody have any reasons for this? Just wondering why this was maybe these va birds just like to talk more? I'm not complaining it's nice to know that the bird you heard fly up is a gobbler for the next mornings hunt.

I wouldn't generally say they talk a lot, but I have been very successful roosting gobblers in the evenings. There's one less gobbler today because he made the mistake of revealing his location yesterday afternoon about 7:50 PM... Story in my diary...

My expierience has been if you can find a quiet spot ( back of the farm or in the mt) they can respond quite easily but these places are harder to find nowadays.

I would think birds not pressured later in the season would be vocal towards the end of the day. Seems to reason if most of the hens were on the nest and the gobblers were roosting alone they would be begging for some company. Maybe not quite like early in the season, but I would think birds not pressured would be fairly vocal.

Now that I've said the above, I don't have a clue when it comes to virginia birds late in the day. However, I have killed a fair number of birds in other states in the afternoon, including a bird killed last Friday in Kansas at 655 PM who came in from at least 500 yards away trying to find out who was using one of Max's box calls! .

Thanks for the response, i was just curious if any of yall who go out of state notice that the birds dont gobble at dusk like they do in va, I dont have enough evidence to go on in virginia because i basically hunt one privately owned farm where the birds dont get all that much pressure, at least aren't supposed to. I take it from the response's that the pressured birds don't do an awful amount of gobbling at dusk, old boy down in georgia told me it was because they shoot hens in the fall in va and therefore the hen to gobbler ratio was different. But from my very limited virginia experience there seems to be about the same amount of hens as in georgia - he wansn't a biologist just another "georgia expert". thanks, and congrats on your bird freddy