I had a miserable day of hunting today, and what happened to me as far as I am aware is perfectly legal, but I think it should be illegal.

OK

Some of the places I hunt requires me to walk about a mile or so just to get to a point to be able to listen for the birds at daybreak. This morning I got to my spot near a river and hear what sounds like a longbeard. I get set up on him about 100 yards off of the river bank, and about 200 yards from the bird. The woods were very open, so I didn't want to take any chances of him seeing me. Well, I heard a boat coming up the river, and just figured it was someone going fishing. Well, turns out, it wasn't. The motor shut off about 300 yards up stream of where I was sitting. Turns out, they were shutting the motor off to see if they could gear any gobblers. So, they break out the trolling motor when they hear this bird gobbling and move to the bank. (Of course, I'm unaware of what is happening at the moment b/c I'm caught up in the moment that the gobbler is answering me every time I call to him) So, anyways, when the gobbler is getting closer, all of a sudden, KABOOM!!!! The turdheards crawled through the woods up in front of me about 70 yards, and let me do the calling for them and they took the bird. I figured there was no need of me yelling or anything like that. If they are that sorry, who knows, they might be willing to shoot at me if I tried to confront them. Oh well, we'll try again tomorrow somewhere else. And tomorrow, it's private land, and I'm the only person allowed to hunt there. I've been saving this little spot for a good day.

Oh yeah, I hunted later in the morning on a different bird near a railroad, and I guess the train spooked him a little. One minute he's about 70 yards away, just out of view. The train comes and goes, and he's about 250 yards away and sounds like he's running from me. Oh well, crappy day for me.

Better than I woulda done.......I've had some bristled comfrontations with guys like that........which isn't the right thing to do.

Yeah. Trespassing is illegal. The boat access deal might have some merit if you have legal access to the land. And the man in the green/brown shirt doesn't have a problem with it.

yeah, well, the land is accessible by boat. It's federal land, so anyone can hunt it. I just happen to use private land to get there.

trespassing/not trespassing isn't the issue here, right? I mean, it is an issue........but the issue here is shortstanding, the way I'm seeing it......which is a pretty poor way to do anything, especially turkeys.

Is it possible that they could not hear you calling, or thought it was a hen calling?

illegality relates to the trespassing or possibly shooting from a motorized boat issue.

the real issue here is ethics...is it ethical for someone to short stand another turkey hunter and the answer is of course not. i have seen situations where the callers sound very realistic and have a gobbler going and another hunter slips in totally unaware that the hen he hears is actually another hunter.

tough one to call here for sure.

Opening day in Tennessee I heard 3 shots before it was even light for hens to start making those quiet tree yelps. An aquaintenance of mine heard the whole thing. Boat comes up the river and shoots them off the roost. Great hunters!

A good caller can be easily mistaken for the real deal. If they accessed the land legally and they hunted on public land, err on the side of they didn't know it was another hunter doing the calling.

go through it every year. I hunt a similar property her ein TN. Provate land that backs up to a lake. All around the lake there is anywhere from between 50 to 250 yards of land around it that is public. Have boats come up and down just about every morning and owl call. Sometimes i hear owl calls up until midday:) Legal to hunt the TVA land but more times than not, they are off the public land and onto private land. This is tresspassing. On occasion though they stay on the public land but will get in between a bird and one of the guys that hunt with me. Unehtical. Nothing you can do. I have had three instances this year. Opening morning, had a gouy TRESPASS from the lake and bust birds off the roost i had setup on. Second weekend. I moved to this property after not hearing anything on another property i hunt and had to run a guy off the private property. Amazing they only see those posted signs on the way out! Last weekend same guy with a buddy. I called the sherriff this time but they were long gone by then. I think their reply was "We live up here and have hunted here our whole lives, you cannot stop us"

Ron

I dont mean to be harsh but you are pretty harsh in your words and some of the replies. The fact is that any decent turkey hunter sounds better than a hen most of the time, and from your story you never said anything to these guys after the fact so you will never know if they indeed were cutting your bird off while you were calling or just getting in between the hen and gobbler which any hunter worth his salt would do. So you have no right to complain confronting the other hunters didnt have to be ugly you could have just talked to them, more than likely they would of been really sorry for what they did. Yes it sucks that you had your bird shot out from under you, it happens occasionally especially on public land, but dont we get enough greif from the anti's like peta and others, do we really have to go around badmouthing other hunters, and what makes it worse is they dont even have a chance to reply. This disgusts me. On another note this has happened to me in georgia where i hunt birds on army corp land near the lake, what did i do? I got a boat, its deadly on gobblers.

Some people are killers and some are hunters!
GS...