Morning Scouting

[Hotspotter]

Birds in my neck-of-the-woods were really going strong this morning. At 6AM, it was quite dark when the first group I was listening for started sounding off. The gobbling was incredible! They kept it up even after they flew down around 20 after 6. They had hens with them, and the few times that the hens talked caused double and triple gobbling.

I did some glassing for awhile at a few other locations, and boy, what a tough time to be a jake. At first glance, there were none around. Take out the binoculars, and I could see them just inside the wood-edge. When the group would come out and try to feed with the hens, several gobblers in full strut would come over and pop them or chase them back.

I'm watching one group in particular that seems to be about 3 hens and 5 toms. Each Tom is doing what he can to assert dominance and there's quite a bit of chasing going on out there. The hens seemed confused and don't understand what all the fuss is about. I have a feeling they're about to find out .

3 weeks to go and I'm stoked.

Joel

[outfishedagain]

I didn't get out this morning but i did go for a drive after work. I did find a group of 9 jakes in the river bottoms and in the top field there were 13 hens and 1 tom in full strut. Sun. we had a different group with about 6 hens and 1 tom. As we watched the hens fed off, so my g/f wanted to try her mouth call, so what the hek. It's three weeks away. She yelped a total of three times and that tom turned and ran across the field and finally picked us up at about 60 yards.(no camo) This was her first time in the woods with a call, of any kind, and now i don't think i'll get any time alone. But after seeing that I hope the snow, that might be moving in, will keep the hens down a little longer.