With team members spread all across the nation, what do your local hunting environments look like? Do you typically hunt high ridges or swampy river bottoms? Is it in triple digits or snow?
Tell us what it's like in your neck of the woods.
Cheers ;D
FullChoke
Well, we'll have snow through mid March most likely and there's about a foot left of the record breaking 7 FEET (not a typo) we had here in NW, PA earlier this year. Not to mention it didnt crawl past the single digit temps for multiple weeks at a time. We have all manner of topography in west/northwest PA, with mostly rolling hills to mountains and large timber flats, interspersed with ag and green fields. I don't even really start looking hard for birds unail mid March. Don't have to where I have the privilege to hunt as I know the land like the back of my hand. I make a point to memorize a new area as much as i possibly can when I first start scouting and use my hunt stand app to mark points of interest. Makes it easier to traverse in the dark and to know where birds are roosting, feeding, strutting and loafing. I like to let my trail cams do the scouting for me when it's early in the year and when I just can't get out to walk as well. My trail cams actually assisted me in bagging both my birds last year on one farm that I just couldn't get to as often as I liked.
Love my trail cams. Breeding a hen EARLY April. Not typical for my area.
Here in my neck of MO it's mostly rolling hardwood timber and ag fields/pastures. No real large blocks of continuous timber,mostly broken up by a fields.
Quote from: jakesdad on February 11, 2018, 08:37:23 AM
Here in my neck of MO it's mostly rolling hardwood timber and ag fields/pastures. No real large blocks of continuous timber,mostly broken up by a fields.
What ag plantings do your birds seem to prefer? Is anything up during your season?
Quote from: mightyjoeyoung on February 11, 2018, 12:55:22 AM
Love my trail cams. Breeding a hen EARLY April. Not typical for my area.
That's in PA? Our birds here in MS are honeymooning that same time.
Mostly corn and beans. We plant winter wheat some years. Sometimes depending on weather there may be some corn starting to come up but it's not a guarantee. Our neighbor plants crops on our ground and his and also have crops on the farm north of us we hunt. We don't hunt fields real often a lot of our timber is open from cattle grazing
Quote from: FullChoke on February 11, 2018, 09:49:30 AM
Quote from: mightyjoeyoung on February 11, 2018, 12:55:22 AM
Love my trail cams. Breeding a hen EARLY April. Not typical for my area.
That's in PA? Our birds here in MS are honeymooning that same time.
April 10th and we had 4 inches of snow the previous week. That's seriously early for the birds to be breeding up here but then we did have a broken winter with periods of unseasonably warm weather...
Here in MS we are blessed with a great variety of habitat from vast hardwood river bottoms to rolling hills to flat agricultural lands to Alabama Black Belt to loess hills to piney woods. Gobblers are in all of them. We are also blessed with 665,000 acres of state managed WMAs scattered through the state in all of the habitat I just described. Typically, I hunt public lands. The first part of the turkey season is usually a little crowded, until one thing occurs - the newspaper in Jackson publishes an article reporting that the crappie are biting at the Reservoir. The woods are immediately vacated of people, leaving just me and the loud-mouthed love lorn lotharios to duel it out for the rest of the season. The WMAs in the central part of the state have river and creek hardwood bottoms with areas of mature planted pines in which the managers will periodically conduct controlled burns on. In usual years the gobbling will peak around the first part of April and slowly taper off through the first of May. Our turkeys are grand masters at avoiding the Tungsten tornadoes, but they will sacrifice one or two youngsters to us, just to take the pressure off of themselves.
Cheers ;D
FullChoke
Here in AZ mostly ponderosa pine forests with fairly deep canyons and long high ridges for the Merriam's. Temps range from flat out cold snow to flat out hot depending upon early or late season. For some of the Gould's it is rolling oak and grass hills and river bottoms as they are in the southern end of the state however there are some large mountains and pine forests there as well.
Man that sound like a heavy workout complete with glorious views.
On a long shot, did you happen to know Marvin Robbins? He was a legendary turkey hunter from Phoenix who died a few years back.
Mine changes from state to state but here in Ms it's big ridges and beautiful bottoms along some creeks. Mixed timber raniging from pines to hardwoods.
This year I'll be chasing a bird in the swamps of Florida with my 12yr old daughter.
I'll also be hunting one of the coolest places you could hunt a turkey, on a volcano!! From sea level to 13k+feet snow covered mountain tops. It's gonna be awesome.
Quote from: 3seasons on February 18, 2018, 03:24:50 PM
on a volcano!! From sea level to 13k+feet snow covered mountain tops. It's gonna be awesome.
That truly sounds like a glorious hunt!! Where is that, in Hawaii or the Pacific NW?
Mine changes from state to state as well. Most all of the TX and OK stuff is either big mesquite flats to wide open wheat fields with tree lined creeks. KS is big cottonwood lined creeks/rivers next to wide open grain or wheat fields. MS and AL is hardwood bottoms and cow pastures. I enjoy those ponderosa pine forests in the NW in the hills since I don't get to hunt that stuff very much. Hoping I can sneak away to CO and NM this year. I still need a bird in LA too!
Quote from: FullChoke on February 13, 2018, 02:16:27 PM
Man that sound like a heavy workout complete with glorious views.
On a long shot, did you happen to know Marvin Robbins? He was a legendary turkey hunter from Phoenix who died a few years back.
I had met Marvin several times at local events, mainly a seminar put on by the local chapter, but did not know him personally.
Quote from: FullChoke on February 18, 2018, 03:43:17 PM
Quote from: 3seasons on February 18, 2018, 03:24:50 PM
on a volcano!! From sea level to 13k+feet snow covered mountain tops. It's gonna be awesome.
That truly sounds like a glorious hunt!! Where is that, in Hawaii or the Pacific NW?
The big island of Hawaii!!!
I live in an area with lots of rolling hills and trees (where the Mennonites don't wipe them all out anyway.) You never know what you are going to get with NY weather, I have sat with my teeth chattering only to be sweating like a pig 3 or 4 hours later. I got rained out opening day 2 years ago, and then not much rain after that week the rest of the season. I love the weather in NY it gives every seasons hunt a new challenge and is part of the personality of every hunt and something new to remember for every species of game I hunt.
Quote from: 3seasons on February 21, 2018, 09:48:40 PM
The big island
That sounds like a grand trip. You do have a grass ghillie suit, right? :TooFunny:
FC