Team 3 - Five Guys Not From Wisconsin

[Greybeard53]

Swabby,

Seems like you have a leg up on the scouting, with dad behind the wheel. After all, the best turkey sign you can look for has feathers and a long beard attached.

Scouting for birds and spending time with your dad. Sounds like a great weekend to me.

Good luck finding a spot to fill your tag.

[Hotspotter]

We're on the board fellas.

Took him at noon today after a very difficult morning hunt.....many close calls, no opportunities to make good on them until the lunch-hour.

More details to follow soon....

Joel

[Greybeard53]

Sweet.

Congrats Joel. I remembered your season started today so I've been sitting here at work wondering if you pulled the trigger yet. I'm looking forward to details.

[ret swabby]

Nice bird Joel. Saw the post "unlucky bird" So you will be scouting "E" do you think the birds will be doing the same patterns in "D"? First two hours with the hens then ma hen hits the nest and the tom's roam? I have a few nice spots to hit after looking around this past saturday but I must say I didn't see any birds and the wind was to wicked to do any type of calling. Will be kind of doing it by the seat of the pants on the 4,5 & 6 of May.

Swabby

[Hotspotter]

Ret:

From everything I've seen, I'm guessing that the hens will be full-on nesting by season "D" in most areas. I say this because of the incredible breeding activity I've been witness to the past two weeks (gobblers have been henned up something fierce), and also because of previous experience with hunting these dates. "D" season is last years "E" season with the season structure moved forward a bit, and I'm used to striking up conversations with mid-morning gobblers in the traditional "E". That isn't to say it's not worth going after early morning birds at this time, esp. lonely ones.

Despite our success this "B" season, it's been a trying experience finding cooperative gobblers that weren't with hens. When we did find them however, like today, the action was dynamite.

Joel

[Hotspotter]

Iff - What's going on in ND? Get out there and whack your bird? Isn't as easy as they make it look on tv is it? Let us know if we can help.

Ret, I think you're in the on-deck circle. Good luck to everyone!

Joel

[ret swabby]

Heading out on Friday morning. Thing called work in the way. I will be doing a briefing in a funeral home tommorrow maybe that will be a good omen for the birds

Looks like it could be very wet friday - sunday in southern MN. Pop has five spotted on his bus route that have been there since monday morning. If they don't laugh to hard at my calling it just maybe my year

Swabby

[Papa Grump]

Good luck Ret! I've been doing some more scouting myself and got 2 pretty good spots to chose from that haven't recieved any pressure this year. Luckily I got permission just this week as my other spots got cancelled out due to poor sportsmanship/abuse of property by previous hunters this year. Bonus is that there is alot of dead elms so if the turkeys don't cooperate, the Morels should!

Brian

[Hotspotter]

PG:

You lucky dawg! Most of the places I turkey hunt had massive white elm die-offs around 10 years ago. Boy did we find morels then!

Ret, any updates? Hope this morning was good to you, let us know if you need any help or support!

Joel

[ret swabby]

Just returned from down south. Talked about wind and rain. Friday rain and wind. Saturday more rain and wind, Today more rain and wind only thunder joined the crowd. Birds were skittish at best and as far as calling or hearing anything it was a no go. I couldn't get one any closer than about 60 - 70 yards. Had a tom out in the pasture this morning and did a run and gun on him. Dad sat back and watched as we were changing fields. Did fine was within 100 yards of a strutting tom when two pheasants busted me. Until that point dad said the birds paid no interest to me. I had a large dence fence line and deep creek to conceal my movements. Frustrating to get busted by another one of mother natures alarm systems.

Wind made it tough.

Wish I had better results.

Swabby

[Hotspotter]

Ret:

Sounds like you were in the game at least! It's ultra frustrating with MN's 5-day seasons, that you should have the run of bad luck to get this many windy/rainy days in a row.

And getting busted is just part of turkey hunting. I've been had by everything from Blue Jays to Bluebills (seriously), and it seems like I yearly find a new animal that can bust me. Last year it was a Mule Deer, this year, it hasn't happened.....yet.

Good work in getting out there and hunting. There were a few of those days that quite a few guys didn't even venture out I'm sure.

Joel

[Hotspotter]

Papa Grump:

Good luck on your hunt tomorrow. Sounds like the weather should settle down for your hunt a bit, and I'm betting the gobbling will be fast/furious after they've been subdued so long.

How about our North Dakota brethren? Any hunt details? They're not as easy to kill as you'd expect are they?

Joel

[Papa Grump]

Thanks Joel! Spotted a couple of keepers this afternoon and they weren't very skittish either. They milled around about 100 yards from the truck and couldn't have cared less. Plus I found 40 morels too boot.

[Hotspotter]

PG:

Quite jealous over here. I'm having no problems finding the birds, but morels, that's a different story. I think I need to get away from the home place, though visions of all the morels I used to find 10 years ago make it difficult. Dutch elm really came through our valley strong then, and you couldn't walk 20 steps without finding one. Now, it's like they're ghosts.

So lay it on thick with the turkey talk, but man, take it easy on me with the morel stories

Joel

[Greybeard53]

Well, I was going to wish you good luck PG, but your probably already plucking your bird by now.

Your timing seems good. I've seen more strutters over the last two days, than I've seen all season. Yesterday I had three mature Tom's strutting less than 70 yds from me as I was doing some shore fishing on the Cannon River. The big Boss Tom was dancing circles with a hen, while the other two Toms (both solid 2-3 year olds)were entertaining themselves.

In case you haven't scored yet, good luck with the rest of your season.

[Papa Grump]

What a frustrating hunt this year. I did the old "swing and a miss" Tuesday morning at 35 yards, downhill, and that was the only shot I had all week It frustrated me so much I spent that afternoon re-checking out my shot pattern which should have hit that bird. I had hens all around me as close as 5 yards away, but the Toms just wouldn't come out of the woods or would stay out of range. Plus I really only got 3 good days in since the weather turned nice, the farming had to get done on Friday and Saturday morning. I guess if there was a bright side to all this was in the evenings while scouting for roosting sites ,I found about 400 mushrooms. Wish I could have done better, but it wasn't meant to be I guess..

[iffwalleyes]

This morning I had a buddy call me up and said there were three toms in his behind his dads place. So I ran home quick grab my gun and got out there. The toms were out of sight. I had a good idea of where they were heading so I took off up the trail about half way up the hill I called to see if I could ge an answer. I got an answer much closer than I expected but not in shotgun range. I spotted one of them a decent looking bird but it was about 75 yds away. The problem became I knew where they were and they also knew where I was. They took off in a hurry. Didn't get a shot at any of them. So I left to go back to work. Right as I got back into city limits here was a hugh tom sitting right in the curb and gutter of the road. Hopefully this weekend can produce something. One thing I know for sure is I sure have not had the time I would like to have had this spring to be out after them to much going on for me. I suppose being sick for 2 weeks might have hampered that too.

[Hotspotter]

IFF:

Keep after them, your luck can change out there in an instant!

Grey:

Been out? I know your season is up and coming, wondering if it passed me by? Anyway, if you haven't been out yet, best of luck, and let us know how you did!

Joel

[Greybeard53]

Joel,

I'm in the middle of my season (G).

The first few days were concentrating on gettin my 16 year old son a bird. He bagged his first turkey last spring with a shotgun.

This year he decided to give it a try with a bow. Two jakes came into our blind and he made a sweet 30 yard shot for his first archery bird. Made the old man awfully proud once again. I'll post some pics when I get some time.

Since then I've passed on a couple jakes, and chose not to take a long shot at big boss. (I'm still wondering if I made the right choice). Three days left of ticks and bug bites.

I'm still having a hard time figuring out the evening hunts.

Later,

Grey

[Hotspotter]

Grey:

Very cool to hear that your son got a bird. At 30 yards, that's no easy task on any turkey.

You made the right decision on long-shots. I've seen too many breast-shot turkeys that guys say will be just fine. I'm never so sure, and it's just not worth it. They're tough enough to kill if you're spot on. Long shots increase the chances of a poor hit exponentially. Esp. if this is an area you like to hunt year after year, which I know it is.

Take out the boom-stick and let 'em have it!

Joel

[Greybeard53]

Well, I'm sorry guys. I thought sure I was going to come through for Team 3 at the last moment today. But I got greedy. I could only hunt until about 11:00am this morning. At about 9:30 the rain let up to a slow drizzle, and I had three birds crossing the field towards me. The first two were jakes and the last one looked like probably a two year old. Nothing huge, but a nice adult bird.

The jakes came right past the blind and I was sure the Tom would follow. After passing 10 yd shots at both jakes, the Tom decided to take a hard left and cross the fenceline I was on. No shot.

All in all though, I had a great season. Especially for a late season and despite the ticks and variety of weather conditions. I saw enough birds to keep everyday interesting. I ended up passing short yardage shots on six jakes, and two questionable shots on Tom's.

I've only had to eat my spring tag twice since I started turkey hunting, but being with my son when he took his first archery bird made the season a huge success. (I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I'm having a hard time posting photos of his bird)

By the way Joel: Thanks for recommending the ground blind. I had never used one prior to this season, and now I wish I had gotten one years ago.

[Hotspotter]

Grey:

Have no regrets about a great hunt. While not a sure-thing, I feel pretty good about your odds on those jakes within 10 yards. Getting your son a bird is more than worth it; I can't wait until my son is old enough to go out with me.

As for the ground-blind, I was lucky enough to get the same advice back when Double Bull was just getting going. My turkey-hunting mentor did some tile-work for one of the owners, and got a proto-type model in partial trade.

We still hunt out of that 10 year-old+ blind, and have taken several turkeys out of it, gun and bow. With a bow, I really wouldn't think of trying to turkey hunt without it.

The well-rounded turkey hunter owes it to themselves at least to try it!

Joel

[Borch]

Greybeard,

Get your son's photo hosted on a photo hosting website. You'll need to copy the Http: address for the photo's location. Many sites will have a box with the address in it. If not right click on the full sized photo on the site and click properties. It'll list the location in the pop up box. Just highlight the entire address and copy it. Once here, make a post. Below the text box there are buttons for "Instant UBB Code". Click the Image button. Paste the address in the new pop up box nad click ok. It will do the Code formatting for you.

If you still can't get it to work send it to me and I'll get it posted for you. jeffonthewater at aol (Contact Us Please) com

Good Luck!

[Greybeard53]

It took me a while to get these posted, but here are some photos of my sons first archery bird mentioned in the posts above.

[Surface Tension]

Greybeard53, congrats to you and your son.