Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting Deer season turkey scouting

Been out a few times looking for a buck and not really caring if I find one. Just nice to sit and look.

Saw 7 longbeards this morning.........and MAY not have seen them all. It was pea soup foggy for a couple hours after daylight.

A week ago I had two separate hen/poult flocks come along below me. One on either side of the creek. They apparently came together about 100 yards out of my sight up the bottom. They started flopping and flogging and fighting one HECK of a fight. Neither flock must have been willing to share that acre of prime swamp bottom. Totaled about 45 birds............

Hopefully winter goes easy on them.

Winter here is going easy on them. It's 64 degrees here now and isn't supposed to get below 50 all week.

I have been seeing several groups of hens in the fields around here and a group or two of gobblers. Hope they all make it thru the winter and want to play in the spring

Deer hunting last thursday was interesting. I heard "some" turkeys making subtle tree calls in the early morning then heard a few distant fly downs. I hear that a lot. All this was across the swamp pond that separate the state forest land from private land. Abound 9:30, something must have startled them. They flew over the swamp to my side, putting while they were flying. No fewer than 30 of them. They came in a few waves. Looked like a B-17 bombing attack on Berlin. They landed well behind me, and a few in the trees. Then the woods behind me was filled with clucking. Eventually, they moved further off. I had never seen that many turkeys there at once. I knew there was a small flock in this area, but had no idea it was that big.

Definitely a good sign !!!!

LOL. I IM'd you after it happened. That was a holy shyt moment for sure. Turkey after turkey coming in for a landing in the tree tops and dry floor leaves surely wakes things up. It was also a good lesson in how they sound when they are startled and when they calm down a bit.

Nobody can teach you how to sound like a turkey better than a turkey can. I love being surrounded by a flock just doing what turkeys do.

But you gotta listen and you gotta pay attention.

Tell little grasshoppa O' great Massa....

Donnie did yer poppa drop yOu on yer head when you was a baby ?

They're chattier in the fall than I've ever heard them in the spring. The toms gobble in the morning. The hens talk in the trees.

I could clearly hear the difference between the putts that were coming out of them when thy flew over and the clucks they were sounding after they landed.

Glock10 how many turkeys have you killed ?

Little Foolish Clown, you sure have a man crush on Yoder. It borders on unhealthy.
You may want to take a few days off and cool down. 😎

TaterheAd....taterheAd....

If you were as smart as you think you are you would see my reply was to Glock10 it had nothing to do with Donnie Stark.

Glock10 might hold a record as the internet expert turkey hunter that has not killed 10 turkeys....

After our general firearms season for deer ends on January 7, we still have 2 weeks of fall/winter turkey season left. The upside to that is that here we are required to wear blaze orange during the general firearms deer season, even if you are hunting something else. But during those two weeks of fall/winter turkey season, you can forgo the blaze and go all camo. Not that it matters much. Fall turkeys don't seem to care much if you're wearing blaze and will forage right up close to your stand.

After 2 days of not deer hunting due to covid, I decided to go out this morning come hell or high water. Got to my area at 5:45 AM, a full hour before legal shooting time. Headed back to my stand at 6:00 AM. Sunrise was around 7:15 am. At 7:30 AM I heard the first tree sounds and couple of fly downs. I saw a few turkeys working to my right way up the ravine through the brush. I started to hear beagles around 8:00 AM and later found that a couple of rabbit hunters had come to the clear cut area that I have to pass to get to my stand. These are the first "other" hunters I have encountered on this tract all this season. About 10 AM or so I saw two birds across the ravine on the hillside scratching for beechnuts. Probably could have taklen one with my slug gun but they were 60 yards and I would have had to take a body shot and an Accutip probably would not have been kind to it. Too risky and just not that important. So they sort of disappeared. Literally. In a Willy Wonka sort of way, they meandered behind a big tree and didn't come out on the other side. I guess they went up the hill behind the tree.

Didn't kill a deer today. In fact, I haven't seen a buck (except in my yard) since the little fork I passed up on the opening day of muzzleloader season. Lots of does and fawns, no bucks. I probably won't use the doe tag I drew. I've got plenty of deer meat in the freezer. I'm going to go back out on Friday (its supposed to rain tomorrow).

Deer season here ends January 7. On January 14-28 the last segment of fall/winter turkey season opens. I'm going to try and get one or two days out during those two weeks. Maybe with all the bird I'm seeing, I might be able to snag a second fall bird. Won't have to wear blaze orange those weeks since deer season is over.

I'm pretty pleased with what I'm seeing. I am seeing way more birds this year than last. The line where the new growth pine thicket meets the old hardwood bottomland is key. They are roosting in the pines at the top of the fill and flying down in the morning into the bottom areas to scratch for beechnuts.

Where you find beech...........there, you'll find turkeys.

Best of luck when season rolls back around !!!

great story and best of luck with hunting and COVID