Hunted Saturday of the VA opener last weekend on some private land that my buddy has access to. Setup a Jake and hen decoy on the edge of a woodline/field near the creek they roost over.
Once the owls started at sunrise it sounded like a choir. I gave two series of light tree yelps on the mouth call early, which they gobbled to, and then I shutup after that. We weren't super close to where
they were roosted, but close enough to be in the game. If I had to guess the majority of the birds were probably 150-200 yards away on the edge of the property line. We heard probably a dozen birds
gobbling on the roost. It was awesome! I did one fly down cackle followed by a series of yelps/clucks every 30 or so minutes. The birds went silent on the ground, it was like they were never there.
I think the majority of them pitched down into the neighbors field, as the few gobbles we heard later in the morning came from that direction. An hour after fly down a Jake came in silent all the way to the decoys.
He milled around at 20 yards for a few minutes and then went about his business, never gobbling. He was a small bird and I decided not to shoot him. His beard was barely visible and he didn't have much for shoulders.
That was the only action we had that morning. We picked up the decoys and decided to run-n-gun until closing at noon but never struck a bird. We had a blast anyways and will be back to that property soon.
I'm in a hotel room right now waiting for our mountain public land hunt to kickoff tomorrow. I'll be posting pictures and updates here next week. Hopefully we find some birds!
