So here is the scenario. I have birds gobbling at approximately 900 yards across a very new clear cut. I only have one legitimate access point. How would you approach? Go in well before daylight? Go around the boundaries of the clear cut? Use of a blind? I am attaching a pic to hopefully clarify. The black outline is our lease boundaries. The red is the access road. Yellow is the clear cut. White is where the birds are. The blue circle in the middle is the high ground, every thing slopes down from here except for due left. I can get to this point undetected but how to get the remaining 400 or so yards. It's killing me.
What are they doing when they hit the ground? Are they flying out to the clear cut? If so, I would sneak in the access road well before daylight and set up.
The bird on the right flies down right, and goes up the hill off of our property. The bird s at the top seem to fly down into the clearing and skirt it to the right.
Got in early and set inbetween them all the way in the top right, in the dark just walk right on over there.
that is exactly what I would do. get between them and where they want to be.
Thanks for the replies. How early would you all suggest? 30 Min/Hour before daylight? More?
I go by when I've been hearing the very first gobble in the mornings and try and be in place 20-30min before that. But yes you will want it pretty dark to be safe
I've hunted around and in some fresh cutover this year and in the past and what I've done as far as getting across it is go in there the afternoon or two before and plan out a route you want to take that is the quietest, looking for "benchmarks" like fallen tree tops or a lone tree etc to "take a left, walk to the side of" and then get there the morning of in the pitch black dark say an hour or so before first light depending on how long it will take you to tip toe across the cutover and let your eyes adjust well. If I want to see how to get around a tree top etc I would point my light at the ground and cover it with my hand and quickly bump the light to give me a quick shot of what I was stepping over. Use the light as little and as covered as possible, I feel like being in there that early before anything wakes up you can get away with a few faint shots of light pointed at the ground then as I get closer across it then I just have to rely solely on my eyes being adjusted and hopefully a semi bright moon at that point.
I don't ever use a light in the mornings but sometimes it can be tough slipping across cutover with limbs and such all over the place but being in there early is the key to cutover.