Well, were two weeks into the season and the birds are proving to be pretty tough! The Hens have been still bunched up in flocks and are just starting to break down a little.
The biggest problem has been to lack of gobbling and I do mean lack of! I hunted a bird in the Ocala National Forest last weekend and he gobbled a total of two times in four mornings. He gobbled once from the limb the first morning at 7:18 AM and once the second morning at 7:20 AM.! How's that for a biological clock. Actually, if I did not know better I would think I was hunting a jake by the way he acted. He never actually gobbled at me or responded to any owling or crow calls. The thing that kept me from pulling out on him was the massive amount of strut sign he left for me to drool over. I cannot see a jake making that kind of sign.
The first morning he flew down with some hens, looped around me in the swamp and out onto a right of way and strutted in my foot tracks while I was down on the river swamp calling to the wind.
It has not been all bad news however and I did kill a dandy bird the first week. I had been hunting a pasture bird that was spending most of his time off the club property. I almost killed him the first morning when he got way behind the hen he was following and strutting for. By their course it looked like they may exit the corner of the field. I looped ahead and just got set up as the hen came into view. However, she turned off 90 degrees away from me. By the time the gobbler got there he had lost her and came into view strutting at 35 yards! He was behind some scrub that was a little to thick to chance a shot and I was only to able to get some video of him before he figured out where his hen went he took off that way.
The third day I caught him roosted away from the field on a sand ridge and he gobbled decent but flew down and would not come to me. There was a bird that was gobbling beyond him just at the end of hearing. He was really hammering and I finally decided to run to the truck and drive around to the other side of the block to try to get to a place where he could come to me. I found him strutting at a fork in the road and I barely got the video camera running when he came into view. I shot him on video but the camera was very close to the gun and the recoil slammed the view finder shut which killed recording. It's tough being the hunter and the videographer! The bird had a 9 1/4" beard, 1 1/8" spurs and weighed 18.6 lbs.
The oddest thing I have seen is the lack of gobbling from the roost in the evening. I am usually able to roost a bird almost every time I go but so far I have not hear a bird in the evening since the season started. I have never seen this before.
A friend did give me a report of a super bird that was killed on his place that had (6) beards! I am hoping for a picture to post on that one.
My friend Rick Edwards took a really good multi-bearded bird with (3) beards. Here is a picture of the beard from that one.
I went to Georgia this weekend with a friend to hunt his small lease and were were in a hornets nest of turkeys! I killed a 20# bird with one of the widest beards I have ever killed. it measured 9 3/4" long and he had 1 1/8" spurs. Overall it was a great hunt and the birds could not have gobbled and better.
I will make a more detailed post on the hunt with some pictures and maybe some video. While we did hear a couple of birds gobbling on the ground one evening, again, we never heard one from the roost on the evening. We were close enough to them each evening to hear them fly up, just no gobbling.
Hope everyone is hearing plenty of gobbles.
I have some new videos posted on my guide site if you would like to watch them at http://www.guidedturkeyhunting.com/ , With a ton more waiting to be edited!
Good luck,
Larry
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