Well the season here in Oregon opened up on the 15th but I really didn't have a chance to hit the woods until today. I do foster parenting and have to be home with the kids until they are off on the bus so no early, before the sun is up hunting for me.
As soon as they left this morning, about 7:25, I headed out the door and hiked to the upper portion of our property. In years past I have seen lots of turkeys on our property but so far this season I have seen NONE! For the last couple months I have been looking, scouting and listening for turkey on all corners of our property (360 acres) and haven't seen a single bird or heard a thing, even using owl and crow locator calls. Needless to say, I wasn't very optimistic. The only call I have is a push pin type and I kind of suck at calling and its not real loud.
I set up on the edge of nice meadow at the top of our property near a fence, sat out a couple decoys, leaned up against a tree and gave it about a half hour for the woods to calm back down before calling. After calling for about a half our, I thought I heard a gobble in the far distance. I held off on calling for about five minutes and tried again and within a few seconds heard a gobble again...this time for sure! For the next hour I could hear that Tom or Toms in the distance gobbling like mad. Often they would call when I wasnt yelping and often didnt respond to the yelp but responded 30 seconds after or so. It was hard to judge the distance of the birds. There is dense woods on the other side of the fence and a slightly steep valley in the direction I heard the birds.
I guess my questions are...do you think I called the birds in to that distance and they held up for some reason...I never saw a single bird. They never really seemed to get much closer or louder...maybe just a little bit. They were on neighboring private property which I do not have permission to hunt, so my tactics are to try and call birds onto my property.
By the way, as you can probably tell, I am new to this...first season. It was WAY exciting hearing those gobblers out in the woods...adrenaline rush. I panicked once I was sure it was turkeys and felt really exposed, only about 20 yards from my decoys. I slowly crawled around to the back side of the tree I was leaning on and positioned myself in the tall grass on my stomach...probably a stupid move but the birds were pretty far out. I doubt they could even see me.
Will the Toms traverse through dense blackberry and deep brush woods or will they hold up at that point and gobble back trying to get the hens to come to them?
What tactics should I and would you use tomorrow?
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