If you could go back in time throughout your life, what was your favorite setting that you ever sat down on a bird?
Its a tough one for me, Ozarks while dogwoods in bloom,swamps of Fla, the republican river in Ks, brush country of west Tx and Sierr@ Madres in Durango are all gorgeous places but not my favorite. A 1200 acre hardwood bottom in Lawrence co, Ms from 1980-1990 would be mine! Of course it is now a 20 yr old natural growth thicket since the saws took her down. Nothing like the sound of those little indian screamin balls of fury of my youth!!
Hardwood ridges are awesome places to kill birds but my favorite place to hunt birds is a river bottom piece that I cut my teeth on and still love to this day. It's called the Flats and to this day it feels like home every time I go in there.
I hunted a hayfield in Tennessee five years ago that was breathtaking. The field was surrounded by ridges with round bales peppering the perimeter of the field. We didn't gain permission to hunt the field and surrounding timber until our 2nd-to-last night there. The only morning that we got to hunt it, day broke with a huge storm cell completely surrounding us. It never did more than sprinkle rain, but the overcast sky and occasional dashes of distant lightning created a scene I'll never forget. It was so quiet, peaceful, and beautiful... Typing this, I can picture it perfectly.
I would have to say last spring when we went to South Dakota the first week of May. We arrived on Wednesday right before a front dropped 6 inches of snow on us Thursday morning. We didn't hunt Thursday but Friday morning we had doubled by 8 o'clock in the 6 inches of snow that was covering everything. Beautiful canvas!!!!!
South Florida Oak Hammock on the edge of a pasture with the Kissimmee river in view. Turkey or no turkey, it don't get any more home grown than that for me.
TX panhandle-- fields, timber, river bottoms. Got it all.
I hunted a river bottom that just ran on and on. was only accessable by foot. no logging roads or trails. spend all day in there with a compass running and gunning. large mature hardwood as far as you could see. there were elevated ridges running all through it and several clear running creeks . there were a couple of natural springs that had the clearest coldest best tasting water you ever had. this was in the early 80s and you would never run into another turkey hunter. they were far and few in between. now its a huge cutover. nothing but replanted pines and huge thickets. kind of breaks my heart thinking about what it has become.
Quote from: guesswho on February 23, 2015, 03:04:16 PM
South Florida Oak Hammock on the edge of a pasture with the Kissimmee river in view. Turkey or no turkey, it don't get any more home grown than that for me.
YEAH BUDDY !!!! :z-winnersmiley:
My most memorable setting was not necessarily my favorite hunting place, but it would have to be the private ranch I hunted in Meade County, SD along the Cheyenne River. I never felt so far away from civilization in my life and I absolutely loved it. A tad bit different scenery for an ole boy raised in the Florida Parishes of Southeast Louisiana.
On the Chariton and Salt river bottoms in Missouri.
SP, I hunt those same Salt River bottoms and they're still pretty good!
Still love hunting the hardwood ridges here in NY and PA where I cut my teeth learning how to hunt these magnificent birds. Something to be said about thunderous gobbles booming through the trees....
Iv hunted turkeys in some fine looking places but around home, in these hardwood Ohio riverfront ridges used to do it for me. Now with all the gas wells and pipelines popping up all over, I guess I'm looking for a new favorite setting.
Cypress swamp in S.Florida with low water.Light filtering through,scattered palmettos and cabbage palms.Late enough to have the cypress greening out and iris in flower stage.Maybe even a bull gator bellowing and a great blue heron squawking on take off to trigger a gobble.
old slew and hardwood bottom just off of the Ms. river here in Ms. back in the 80's and 90's
man could you hear some birds up in there, loved to hear them gobble at the tugboats as they came down the river
Being a Florida flatlander, and killing most of my gobblers in FLA and in the Lowcountry of SC, I take those settings for granted, and love totally different settings. Probably the two coolest places I've hunted were Nebraska and California. In NW Nebraska, the grassy plains give way to rocky buttes, and it is absolutely gorgeous country out there!! In central California, I hunted in the mountains about 3,500 feet up (yeah, yeah, I know, remember, I said I'm a Florida flatlander!!! ;D). That too though was absolutely gorgeous!!
That's what I love about traveling to other states to hunt, is seeing the gorgeous terrain that makes America beautiful. :smiley-patriotic-flagwaver-an
Our hunting land that we currently have. It's in alabama and borders the tallapoosa river. Hardwoods and pines with the dogwoods blooming and turkeys sounding off. It cant get any better IMO.
Garnering permission to hunt in California is a feat in and of itself... When I first started turkey hunting, I acquired access on a ranch with steep hillsides bordering a walnut grove... The birds would fly off the roost, and loaf in and around that orchard all day... Lots of birds.
Catch was, the owner would not let me hunt the orchard, cause he did not feel it was sporting (and he was right)... Hunting that steep hillside was where I cut my teeth, and killed a few birds. I learned a lot about turkeys and turkey hunting on that ranch, and as many birds were living in that area, I earned every one of them.
I love hunting hardwood ridges, but my favorite has to be a hardwood river bottom. Sloughs, snakes, mud....it all adds to the experience. I have a couple of particular spots that I hold in high regard. Nothing like watching an old swamp gobbler work his way in under the canopy of giant oak trees.
Quote from: El Pavo Grande on February 23, 2015, 11:54:00 PM
I love hunting hardwood ridges, but my favorite has to be a hardwood river bottom. Sloughs, snakes, mud....it all adds to the experience. I have a couple of particular spots that I hold in high regard. Nothing like watching an old swamp gobbler work his way in under the canopy of giant oak trees.
My favorite setting when hunting FLA or SC. :icon_thumright:
I've had the privilege of hunting some beautiful spots. But sitting up against a huge cottonwood in NW Nebraska on the last evening and watching 26 beautiful Merriam's turkeys fly up 40 yards from me as the sun was setting is a memory I will always cherish.
The boss was in those 26 birds too. Never did kill him.
"Bays" in crop fields....decoy in the bay...find a nice shady tree...settle in for a nice hunt (or nap, both are good)....and just relaaaaxxxx.....
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For me it would be the bluff country of Northeastern Iowa along the Mississippi River. That is where I learned to turkey hunt, and I have some fine memories up there.
Hunted them in quite a few different places BUT I'll take the ridge tops of Western Pa or WV any day.
Nothing like it on a crisp early spring day. Whew!
Calling them in from one end of a grass runway to other. Approx 600 yrds.
I've only hunted NE Florida and SE Georgia, but have some great memories. My most memoriable setting was in a Cypress hardwood swamp at sun up, listening to the woods wake up and hearing three gobblers sounded off in a gobbling contest. I can close my eyes and see and hear all over again. :)
The first bird I ever took ended up being a jake. I had hunted hard the weeks leading up to that day in my first season, and had missed two long beards already. My confidence was pretty low at that point, and to complicate things I was hiking in to a new piece of land, public, about an hour before sunrise on a tip from a buddy who was hunting the area the days prior, and who had worked a couple birds but wasn't able to make it happen.
So I was hiking up this big hill to a ridge line when the sun started lighting things up not knowing where I was going. An owl set off a couple gobblers across this lake. They could've been a mile or more away, and my heart kind of sank a little because there weren't any birds near me. I called a little bit, got no response.
When I finally huffed and puffed my way to the top of this hill, the sun had just broken the horizon, beams of light where coming through the clouds and illuminating this big flat ridge top. Massive hackberries and poplars mostly, but it was still early in the year, so no leaves were up, but the forest floor was blanketed in fringed phacelia, just about calf high.
This stuff:
(http://plants.usda.gov/gallery/large/phfi2_002_lhp.jpg)
I thought "man, it's cool just to be up here, turkey or not" and just about that time I spotted a couple morel mushrooms and started popping them into my vest. I'd find one, then another, then three or four in a bunch. I looked at my watch and it said 7:15. "way too early to be out here picking mushrooms"
So I sat down at the base of this big hackberry and let out a couple half-hearted yelps, and a gobbler fires back at me immediately. He couldn't have been more than 75 yards away. Yelp again, he cuts me off, closer this time, so I get my gun ready. He came right in just like they do on TV and so I let him have it at about 25 yards. After the shot, I didn't see him, and I thought Id missed a 3rd bird but I ran to the spot and there was. My prize, laying in the phacelia on that ridge top. I let out a yowl so big that Im sure everyone on the lake that day thought there must have been a maniac loose up in the hills. It wasn't until I called my buddies and had them meet me to show them the bird that they told me it was "just a jake", which I didnt really even know what that meant, and hadn't noticed in all the excitement.
That's just a long way of saying that an open ridge top in Tennessee is where I feel like I need to be hunting. Cant stand sitting at the edge of a pasture watching the grass grow. I like to be in the woods.
By the way, that jake tasted great fried up with those morels.
Big river bottoms of south Alabama.!!
I really don't have a favorite terrain setting...as long as it's in the deep woods and not in big pastures or fields...only because the gobble is so much louder in the woods than the open spaces. Especially when in the same draw, drainage or hollow.
When I hunted the public lands of SW Fl. One of my favorite conditions used to be in a drought year. No mosquitoes and the cypress ponds would be dry and filled with lush green grass.
A few pictures of why I liked these conditions.
That green grass is the deepest hole in head and goes dry last.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Iflytrout/GOBBLERS/flintlockhuntbottom.jpg)
When the grass is high enough on the edges you can get down in it and be concealed really good.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Iflytrout/GOBBLERS/flintockspot.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Iflytrout/GOBBLERS/flintlockgobbler3_zps31686188.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Iflytrout/GOBBLERS/bigbird_zpscbb4df08.jpg)