Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting Had a great New York trip in spite

of all the rain.

Sunday AND Monday were soaking wet. Old men do NOT like being wet through and through even when wearing rain gear. Birds were gobbling in the rain but not in the numbers of years past. It just seems to me that numbers are dropping.

Tuesday dawned with sun for a change. Another (unexpected) change was the absence of any gobbling. None, zero, nada. I made the decision to leave my blind and walk and gun. When I was younger, it was running and gunning. I headed up onto a hardwood ridge that my son and I started hunting on in 1999. We dubbed the hill "Scare Crow Hill because there was an old scarecrow by a tree on top. We have erected a scarecrow almost every year to keep it up. I added a pair of Rocky Snakeboots years ago and they still hang to this day. I had JUST made it to the top when a gobble came from below. I set up next to my very first tree that I have killed many birds from and called with my Quaker Boy Grand Ol' Master box call and immediately got a response. I called a couple times more with the same results. After about 10 minutes I saw movement and this big longbeard stepped into view. I fired and that was the end of his strutting. As I shot, the bird gobbled again from below. The bird I shot came in silent, so there were at LEAST two together.







On Thursday I was able to shoot another bird. This was a jake and he too came from an unlikely, for me, spot. He was in a very wet think swamp. He gobbled on his own, otherwise I would have never known he was there. He answered a couple yelps/clucks and took about half an hour to come in silent. But in the end, I filled both of my tags.