After not getting drawn for a hunt in my own state for the 3rd time in 4 years, I packed up after St. Baldricks and headed north to my camp in SC. On the way up, the guy I lease from, who I also share a turkey only lease with, called me and told me that the guy who has the deer lease had a feeder running on the property so he could hog hunt. That made the property illegal to hunt. I was @#$%&!!!! furious!!!
My friend reamed the guy's posterior and told him in the future to have his feeder empty and not be on the property after March 1st, or else risk losing the lease (since my friend works for a local land management company, and handles that hunting leases).
So after arriving, I headed over to the lease, disconnected the feeder battery and solar charger. Then I moved up the feeder motor so the broadcaster was into the dispensing cone so no more corn could come out. Then I duct taped the heck out of that feeder so that absolutely no corn could come out at all. Then I walked the roads on the lease, and found another feeder. I repeated the scenario on that feeder, rendering it inoperable. Unfortunately, that also made the lease unhuntable.
After that, I headed over to my deer hunting properties to scout for turkeys. Unfortunately, the biggest property that had the most turkeys was also logged last year, making for tough turkey hunting. So I hunted my butt off for 5 days, only heard 2 gobbles, and saw one turkey, a hen, who was up on the roost at 10 o'clock in the morning.
I saw several gobblers and some hens, all in fields I didn't have permission to hunt. What a frustrating week.
Now I'm back home in FLA, with nowhere to hunt, and it will probably be a couple of weeks before I can go back. Not the start to my season I was hoping for.
On the bright side, things can only improve from here..........I hope!!!
