Alright, what the stink is happening with my turkeys!?
We hit the breeding peak and all the boys got henned up. Ok. We expect that. We're turkey hunters (I can finally call myself that with confidence!
) and that's part of the game--less gobbling and tougher-to-call toms. But there's still the anticipation of that second peak a week or two later where the hens go to nest and leave the boys lonely and looking for love.
Still waiting for that . . .
So, what is happening with the birds?! Last year, I worked two gobblers on the last day of the season. They were gobbling hard on the roost and looking for me on the ground. Then, I struck a bird late in the afternoon that only shock-gobbled and wouldn't come in.
Then there's yesterday. I went deep into the back-country of the national forest, high on top of a long ridge that looked like a chain gang with leaf rakes had been through. I was high up in turkey country at dawn and heard nary a peep. Then, as I walked and called and walked and called and sat and called and walked and called and sat and called for the rest of the ENTIRE day I heard NOTHING. There was an imagined gobble mid-morning that might have possibly sort of happened after a locator call, but it's hardly even worth mentioning. I'm not even sure I heard it.
I did SEE two turkeys as I slipped through a sign-rich flat on top of a high ridge, but after a 5-minute staring match, belly crawl to a tree, and 20 minutes of sparse clucking & purring, I saw one of them fast-walking away from me. That was rather interesting though. I caught the flapping of wings in the corner of my eye as I walked, turned and saw two turkey heads silhouetted about 75 yards away. Were they fighting? Were they mating? Were they flying away from me, and decided to examine me more? Were they coming to my calling and I bumped them? Were they just doing their own thing and ignoring me? Earlier in the day, a hen answered me. At any rate, that was the most excitement I had all day.
I covered MILES, people. Many, many miles. I've never been out for an entire day in this area without hearing a gobble at all. There have been slow-gobbling days of course. But, walking and calling have always produced some kind of response. This was the hardest turkey-hunting with the least results I've ever done. I won't be able to walk for a couple of days!
So, what's happening here? Is it me? The wind was up a bit (around 10mph--nothing too strong, just enough to provide a little background noise), so I felt like I needed to call rather loudly. Did I call too loudly? Too aggressively? Should I have sat more and walked less? Was that amount of wind enough to push them down to the bottoms? I wanted to get further in, away from where they've been hunted hard. Where I hunt, going deep means going high. Has the warm winter thrown everything wierd? Or the dry spring?
Or, and I don't even want to say this
, . . . uhm . . . is the fat lady warming up, getting ready to . . . um . . . sing? 