Pardon my crowing

[shaman]

I had #1 granddaughter out over the weekend.  She came for an overnight campout in the family room-- set up the tent on the carpet.  She's turning 4 this week.  Sunday AM, we were out at first light. I drove her over to a county park less than a mile from the house. I've been working on her since she came home from the hospital, teaching her about turkeys and how to call.  She's inherited my ability to call turkeys with just our own voice. She does a fair yelp and a cluck without a call.

This was the big test.

Read:
Mooslette and the Turkey

1)  We managed to call up a turkey together.  She and I took turns on the call.
2)  We successfully tested the Shamanic Mk I box call.  The gobbler honored it multiple times.  This is my first DIY box.
3)  I'd been saying all along that one day there'd be turkeys around the house. My folks moved into that house in 1977. I've been living there since 2013.  I've been calling from the back porch every spring for 25 years.  There's only a mile left  to go.

Bottom line: Pretty soon, Mooselette and I will able to sit on the front porch and call turkeys.  It also means that I can build a call in the basement and go out the front door and test it.  I'm so happy I'm leaving puddles.

[dirt road ninja]

Glad your granddaughter has an interest, my daughter started hunting with me this year. I'm envious of turkeys that close to your house.

[shaman]

When I started hunting the closest turkeys you could hunt where 5 counties over.  I had to drive 3 hours to hunt. By the mid-90's you could hunt them in the next county to the east, but I never heard or saw them in a decade of deer hunting out that way.   I saw my first turkeys in Hamilton County, Ohio,  where I live, about a year ago, just across the Indiana line. 

Somebody told me about 3 months ago that they had seen a flock in the county park near my house.  My expectation is that they will cross the remaining mile or so and be roosting in the woods by the house within the next year.

They're coming!  My guess is that once they get into the neighborhood, they'll be a real PIA to most folks.  I'll be loving it.  I've been waiting 35 years.