TomC

I' ve had mornings like your in the past! Don' t give up though. You will see " What a difference a day makes!" That will make your next tom a real sweet success!

Mikey S.

Another thing that spooks me is that I never saw the guy. The woods were pretty open, mostly oaks, I could of easily seen another guy 100yds. in the woods when I stood up and scanned with my binos...........if he would of been wearing his required 100 sq. in. of blaze like PA requires when you are moving around in the woods, and also have it displayed while you are calling within so many feet of your tree, 15 I believe.
I was just reading in yesterdays local paper that game wardens in my part of the state are writing loads of citations to idiots who aren' t wearing their orange. One guy was cited as a game warden observed him sneaking along the edge of a brushy field, shaking a gobble call, with no orange on, while on public land!! Now is PA the only state that holds that kind of an idiot? I' m curious to see what you guys from other states have to say. I know most hunters have more common sense than that.
I' m starting to think a turkey tag should be implemented here in PA, not because of what happened to me the other day, but because it may keep some of the nimrods out of the woods who like to gobble and stalk around, most likely the ones who cause the accidents.
I' m heading to some new, virgin birds on some private land this weekend, and lady from work invited me out. Her husband is gonna show me around their 100 acres. Hopefully, I can stir some birds up there this weekend!

Maytom and TomC, how' s New York doing for the birds?

TomC

Our season is not quite a week old. But I am not complaining! I wore out the alternator on my car looking for them. It' s a good thing that I got a turkey hunting buddy with a truck. My car should be back on the road by Wed. AM. There are pockets " here and there" of turkeys--but you really have to put some traveling to find them--there also plenty of turkey hunters to go around too-some from Vermont. The name of the game is " Get there EARLY" .

maytom

Mikey, I went out yesterday and all that happened was other hunters were bumping into me at each place I went to!! I was set-up and calling when these other guys came walking towards me!! Who think' s that they can walk towards a " bird" without spooking it? Also why would they be walking towards a Hen anyway? Worst part was, I burned a vacation day yesterday just because it was suppose to be a great mornig!! It was a big mistake on my part!! Hunt the weekdays!!

Mikey S.

Maytom.........I suppose you answered my question about other states having guys that do dumb stuff in the woods. Who does try and sneak up on a hen...in gobbler season??

TomC - I thought I did have ' em beat the other day when I got there early.........geez, I was sitting under my tree at 5:20 am! And I still lost......bad!

Gotta keep trying though. Sooner or later..........I hope......I might get to look through my Leupold' s crosshairs at a big red white and blue head........

Stickemup

I can definitely sympathize with you MikeyS.

I worked a bird one morning in a huge swamp for almost three hours. There was a whole flock and I was tailing them as they moved away. This one gobbler kept coming back towards me, but would then go back to the flock. He finally decided to come to me and caught me in an opening with no cover. He spooked and took off and a few seconds later. BOOM! Game over. It sucks, but it' s always a possiblity on public lands.

Maytom,
You sound like you' ve been hunting in my neck of the woods. I' ve been messed up by idiots more times than I can remember. I have seen it all and just when I think I' ve seen the stupidest one ever, someone else tops him. I didn' t get to work one bird this year without being messed up by idiots. Not one. I finally killed one going back to roost in the afternoon. It was the only way I could get one on one with him.

It' s pretty much the same story here every year. I go before the season and listen to them gobble so I can get an idea where they are roosting and which direction they go after flydown. I don' t see another soul in the woods. Come opening day, I get there a couple of hours before daylight, go on in to my setup and wait for the madness to begin. The trucks start pouring in 30 minutes before daylight and continue to roar up and down the roads until 30 minutes after daylight. You hear crow calling before daylight and owl hooting after daylight. You hear the really intelligent ones roar to a stop, get out of the truck and start owl hooting, crow calling, turkey calling and God knows what else while standing next to their truck. You here turkey calls from 500 yards away.

I' ve watched guys walk right up to a gobbling turkey while owl hooting the entire way and then stand there in puzzlement when the bird quits gobbling.

One of the all time greatest was when I had a bird gobbling one morning and some dude heard him from a main road. The guy proceeds to drive his truck at 20mph down this little logging road to within 75 yards of where the bird just gobbled a few minutes before. Now ordinarily, that truck would have made a lot of noise, but this was no ordinary truck. No sir. It was a work truck complete with racks of tools hanging in the bed. Tools that swung back and forth and made more noise than a sherman tank at high speed.

I' m now sitting there wondering just what in the hell this guy could be up to, when he drives up, jumps out of his truck and proceeds to start rummaging through the tool box in the bed of the truck. He starts taking stuff out of the box and throwing it down into the bed and making more God awful racket doing it. Finally he comes out with what he is looking for. A crow call.

SQUAWK! SQUAWK! SQUAWK! Now I know that turkey was here somewhere. Wonder why he won' t gobble at this crow call???

Mikey S.

That' s pretty good, stickemup, I guess idiots are everywhere. ..........and I met a new one yesterday.
I was in a sporting goods store after work, looking at some of their turkey supplies they had on sale............and was standing next to a guy(who looked about 50 yrs. old) asking a behind-the-counter salesguy " what' s an easy turkey call to use?" So immediately I become interested in this conversation and hang around to listen while checking out the scopes under the counter. I sensed entertainment was on it' s way. The sales guy shows him a twin sided push button call, that sounded pretty good. Hey nothing wrong with that.........than the conversation went straight to the outhouse. The " buyer" asks the salesguy if they sell #4 turkey loads for 12 guage guns. The sales guy replies " yes" , and asks the almighty question: " what size shell, 2 3/4, 3 or 3 1/2" ? They guy asked " what do you mean?" Now it gets even better!! The salesguy, looking pretty dumbfounded, and trying to figure out what to sell the guy, asks " have you patterned the gun?" The buyer replies " what is that?" Now hold on guys, here' s the real shocker. Salesguy then asks: " What kind of gun do you own?" Buyer replies " I really don' t know, I bought it last winter from a realative, I just know it' s a pump action." I start thinking to myself " This guy is gonna kill a 30lb. 14" bearded 3" spurred hog of a bird in my spot this saturday. And he' ll probably shoot it out of a tree while I' m trying to set up on it." Can it get any dumber than this? I don' t expect everyone out there to know what patterning a shotgun is, or all the differences in all the shells are out there, but come on, a little common gun knowledge goes a long way. If you just bought a gun and don' t even know what brand it is...........please stay home on saturdays mornings.

maytom

Great stories guys!! Sometimes just about when you think you seen or heard it all!! Hopefully, during the week things will turn out much better!! Thanks for sharing!!

Turkey Addict

Heck I got a story when it comes to stupid things people do.

It was about five years ago my sister inlaws boy friend asked me if I would help him get his bird. He had ben after them for three days, and had no luck at all. So I agreed to go with him on Saturday morning. I told him I would be at his place at 4:30. I arrived at his at 4:30 like I promised. We were going to be hunting on his step dads land. He told me all about how he knew right were they roosted every night, in a patch of pine trees. I filled him in on the details of how we should get in tight between 75 and 150 yards from their roosting spot...so I thought. We jumped into his beat up old 4X4 and headed back behind his step dads farm. So out across a field we went, skirting the woods in the pitch black darkness. After a wile we slowed and turned off into the woods onto an old logging road. I had no idea of the lay of the land and never thought much about it. We drove into the woods about 400 yards before the road turned into a narrow four wheeler trail. Then a few hundred yards further the trail turned into nothing more than a path. But we pressed onward untill we reached a gully where the guy got the truck stuck. In the prossess of trying to get unstuck he got the truck wedged in between a couple of trees. Well we farted around in that gully for 20 minutes, Rodding on it, and running over trees and brush, before we finally got the truck up on solid ground. By that time the sky was growing light and I was worried that we would never make it near this roosting spot before the sun came up. I told him we better leave the truck and go the rest of the way on foot. So we climbed out of the truck and got our gear ready. Once we were geared up I asked " So how far to this place were they are roosting?" He points up in the air at a few pine trees about 100 yards away and says " They usally roost right there."

Well I let him know in a few choice words that this plan would never work. We then got out of there and went to a different place a few miles down the road. I insisted he park his truck by the road. After walking over a mile we struck into a group of jakes and he got his first turkey. I spent a lot of breath trying to explain to him that you can' t just drive up too a Turkey and kill it. I am not sure he learned any thing though. To this day I think that is the only turkey he has ever gotten.

Some people just don' t give a turkey' s smarts the credit they deserve.

Stickemup

LOL guys! It is refreshing to know we don' t have ALL of the stupid people. I still think we' ve got more than our fair share though. Good luck on the rest of your seasons. Mine is over for this year. At least I didn' t get skunked.