CMRM
05-09-2007, 05:03 PM
No luck out there so far. I was out there for the better part of three days with only a lot of mosquito bites to show for it.
After the busiest night of work I've ever had (14 hours on your feet makes for a long night) I had to get some sleep, and didn't get out to my hunting grounds until late afternoon on Mon. I had my pop up set up in a spot I KNEW the birds traveled every PM between 5 and 7 and every AM between 9 and 11. I set my pop up there a week before, and the birds had seemed to be igoring it. I sat out there until legal shooting was done. Nothing. I then stowed the gun and wandered around trying to pinpoint roosting sites until after dark. No gobbles were heard.
I got out there at about 5:30 am the next morning and set up on a pine ridge. I heard a fair amount of gobbling in the morning, but obviously am not a good enough caller to get them to come into me. I moved around a bit to try to get closer or intercept the gobblers, but didn't have any luck. By then it was getting close to 9, so I hit the pop-up again on the known travel route. Again, nothing. I sat calling sparingly until after noon, and then got up and wandered around trying to find something. I kicked a hen off her nest, but that's all I saw. I went in for a few hours from 2-4 to eat and take a nap, and got back out to the pop-up by 4pm. I had a hen wandering around me for about an hour, and that's it.
Next morning (today) I got out at about 530 again, and this time set up right where some of the gobbling I'd heard the day before was. This time, they started gobbling from about 200 yards farther away, and I still couldn't get them to come in. It started pouring by 8 am, so I went back to the pop-up. After the rain stopped by about 10am there was a gobbler across the road from me probably 100-150 yards away (on property that I don't have permission to hunt). I called to him for about 30 min, and he kept getting farther away. I was silent for about another 30 min and heard him gobble a ways away, this time on my property, I think. I figured this might be a good time to try the Thunderhead walk and call method, so I switched calls from my box call to a mouth call and headed into the woods. I walked slowly along trying to give my best impression of a bummed-out hen for about 400 yards. As I was nearing the place I was going to stop calling, I put my hand on a tree to steady myself as my foot slipped. Unfortunately the tree was dead on rotted. The tree was about as big as my thigh and 30 feet or so tall. It fell over hitting two other trees on the way down. After the big CRASH, the woods went dead silent. I muttered a few bad words waited a few seconds then resumed walking and calling for about 50 more yards. I stopped calling and quietly slipped into an old deer blind that was about 20 yards away. After sitting for a few minutes, I faintly heard the goodbye gobble as my guy headed north to the next county, most likely to end up right in the lap of some shmuck sitting in the middle of a field, wearing blue jeans and a camo shirt, and who'd been drivng the back roads yelping from his car with his box caller since March.
I'm not bitter at all.
p.s. I'm pretty sure that some disgruntled worker at the bug repellant factory has replaced the contents in my can of OFF with some formula that actually attracts mosquitos.
After the busiest night of work I've ever had (14 hours on your feet makes for a long night) I had to get some sleep, and didn't get out to my hunting grounds until late afternoon on Mon. I had my pop up set up in a spot I KNEW the birds traveled every PM between 5 and 7 and every AM between 9 and 11. I set my pop up there a week before, and the birds had seemed to be igoring it. I sat out there until legal shooting was done. Nothing. I then stowed the gun and wandered around trying to pinpoint roosting sites until after dark. No gobbles were heard.
I got out there at about 5:30 am the next morning and set up on a pine ridge. I heard a fair amount of gobbling in the morning, but obviously am not a good enough caller to get them to come into me. I moved around a bit to try to get closer or intercept the gobblers, but didn't have any luck. By then it was getting close to 9, so I hit the pop-up again on the known travel route. Again, nothing. I sat calling sparingly until after noon, and then got up and wandered around trying to find something. I kicked a hen off her nest, but that's all I saw. I went in for a few hours from 2-4 to eat and take a nap, and got back out to the pop-up by 4pm. I had a hen wandering around me for about an hour, and that's it.
Next morning (today) I got out at about 530 again, and this time set up right where some of the gobbling I'd heard the day before was. This time, they started gobbling from about 200 yards farther away, and I still couldn't get them to come in. It started pouring by 8 am, so I went back to the pop-up. After the rain stopped by about 10am there was a gobbler across the road from me probably 100-150 yards away (on property that I don't have permission to hunt). I called to him for about 30 min, and he kept getting farther away. I was silent for about another 30 min and heard him gobble a ways away, this time on my property, I think. I figured this might be a good time to try the Thunderhead walk and call method, so I switched calls from my box call to a mouth call and headed into the woods. I walked slowly along trying to give my best impression of a bummed-out hen for about 400 yards. As I was nearing the place I was going to stop calling, I put my hand on a tree to steady myself as my foot slipped. Unfortunately the tree was dead on rotted. The tree was about as big as my thigh and 30 feet or so tall. It fell over hitting two other trees on the way down. After the big CRASH, the woods went dead silent. I muttered a few bad words waited a few seconds then resumed walking and calling for about 50 more yards. I stopped calling and quietly slipped into an old deer blind that was about 20 yards away. After sitting for a few minutes, I faintly heard the goodbye gobble as my guy headed north to the next county, most likely to end up right in the lap of some shmuck sitting in the middle of a field, wearing blue jeans and a camo shirt, and who'd been drivng the back roads yelping from his car with his box caller since March.
I'm not bitter at all.
p.s. I'm pretty sure that some disgruntled worker at the bug repellant factory has replaced the contents in my can of OFF with some formula that actually attracts mosquitos.