The Hills Ring Silent

[aclawrence]

One thing that makes me sad while turkey hunting is visiting an area that used to hold several gobblers.  You could get up on a high spot and hear birds in all different directions.  I'm thinking of a certain spot that was like this when I first really started hunting public land.  I had one really special hunt in there where I was up high on the side of ridge, fairly thick pines on my left and on the right it dropped down into a huge bottom.  I set up on a bird and got to watch him strut and gobble on the limb.  I called him in and killed him.  That was the last bird I ever heard in there.  Did I ruin the spot, should I have let him go? I think he was up so high because he was alone and looking for hens.  I know it's not my fault.  I did hear Chubbs and Andy talking about this on their last podcast how birds can vacate an area when there's not enough food and they don't come back.  Maybe that's what happened.  I have several spots like this and I still go to them and sit down at the tree where I've killed a bird before, but the hills ring silent.  I'm sure ya'll all have spots like this.  What's really sad is they've come into this one area I'm talking about and cut it all down.  There was a really cool "secret" ridge top in old planted pines that I loved to walk through.  It was one of my favorite spots just to be in, but it's gone now.  Things change and this might even help bring some turkeys back in there now until it grows up into a thick cutover.  Good luck this year and don't forget to check back in on those old spots.  If you hear a gobble it will be really special. 

[aclawrence]

Here he is. He flopped all the way to the bottom of the hill with me chasing after him. One of my favorite hunt memories.


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[Badger]

Sir,  I had a couple of spots like this that I hunted 30 to 40 years ago, but now that I am getting older and friends and family farms are gone my favorite spots are gone.  I had access to Public ground but those spots are gone today.  I was scouting 2 days ago in an area of a game lands that I had had never scouted before.  Old habits and memories are all one has when they get older.

[aclawrence]

Sir,  I had a couple of spots like this that I hunted 30 to 40 years ago, but now that I am getting older and friends and family farms are gone my favorite spots are gone.  I had access to Public ground but those spots are gone today.  I was scouting 2 days ago in an area of a game lands that I had had never scouted before.  Old habits and memories are all one has when they get older.

Hey Badger good luck this season. I hope you're able to find some new favorite spots filled with turkeys.


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[ScottTaulbee]

One thing that makes me sad while turkey hunting is visiting an area that used to hold several gobblers.  You could get up on a high spot and hear birds in all different directions.  I'm thinking of a certain spot that was like this when I first really started hunting public land.  I had one really special hunt in there where I was up high on the side of ridge, fairly thick pines on my left and on the right it dropped down into a huge bottom.  I set up on a bird and got to watch him strut and gobble on the limb.  I called him in and killed him.  That was the last bird I ever heard in there.  Did I ruin the spot, should I have let him go? I think he was up so high because he was alone and looking for hens.  I know it's not my fault.  I did hear Chubbs and Andy talking about this on their last podcast how birds can vacate an area when there's not enough food and they don't come back.  Maybe that's what happened.  I have several spots like this and I still go to them and sit down at the tree where I've killed a bird before, but the hills ring silent.  I'm sure ya'll all have spots like this.  What's really sad is they've come into this one area I'm talking about and cut it all down.  There was a really cool "secret" ridge top in old planted pines that I loved to walk through.  It was one of my favorite spots just to be in, but it's gone now.  Things change and this might even help bring some turkeys back in there now until it grows up into a thick cutover.  Good luck this year and don't forget to check back in on those old spots.  If you hear a gobble it will be really special.

A lot of the spots I grew up hunting are the same. Farms are now subdivisions, fields have houses or stores in them, Amish bought them and raped the land of everything it has. Public areas that were special to me, not necessarily the best, or had the most birds but places I learned to hunt public turkeys, or places that for some reason or another just appealed to me, that were good for a turkey a season, now over ran with hunters so bad that it makes you sick to your stomach when you drive by. Places that as few as 3 or 4 years ago it wasn't uncommon to hear upwards of 6 birds a morning, now you're lucky to hear one. Places that habitat hasn't changed, places that are directly linked to hunting pressure and over abundant harvest in small pockets.


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[joey46]

Yes good luck.  One of my new friends and younger new breed turkey chasers legally runs very sophisticated game cameras on a Florida WMA near my home.  It is in the quota system so hunting pressure is minimal.  He will send me multiple pictures daily of big gobblers still strutting and following hens.  I have drawn this WMA twice and taken a nice longbeard.  This year was a "pass the Jake's" 3 day hunt.  In the multiple times I've hunted and scouted this 8000 acres for now over 3 years I've heard ONE total gobble.  I no longer worry about hearing them.  Again good luck. This has really turned into the "doom and gloom" forum.  Too bad.

[turkey stew]

Over population and I'm not talking about turkeys! In my area the Amish shoot everything and destroy the forest! I call them human carp.

[mountainhunter1]

One primary word - habitat. The best thing that could have happened was for them to cut some timber in there. The birds will come back. They liked the topography once before, and the topography has not changed. One can cut too much at one time on occasion and transform the forest in an unproductive way, but a healthy balance of the stages in the forest is good, and deer and turkeys need cover and a lot of edge effect to work with. And if those two things are present, then the food will be there. And that usually will equal turkeys.

[Gooserbat]

Over population and I'm not talking about turkeys! In my area the Amish shoot everything and destroy the forest! I call them human carp.

They have the worst approach of any group of people and a inflated sense of entitlement to go with it.

[bwhana]

This is the case with a favorite piece of game lands here. Used to hear 10+ gobblers on any given day in season, but you are lucky to hear a couple now.

The only habitat changes there is they switched out white clover in the few plots to crimson, which turkeys and deer ignore. They also have not done a controlled burn on the field areas in 6 years, which they used to do every 2 or 3.

But the biggest factor I have noticed is we had a period of 5 straight years without acorns due to late frosts.  When the acorns were abundant prior to this spell, the birds were thick and it looked like someone took tillers into the woods there was so much scratching.  Almost no scratching to be found now.

[aclawrence]

This is the case with a favorite piece of game lands here. Used to hear 10+ gobblers on any given day in season, but you are lucky to hear a couple now.

The only habitat changes there is they switched out white clover in the few plots to crimson, which turkeys and deer ignore. They also have not done a controlled burn on the field areas in 6 years, which they used to do every 2 or 3.

But the biggest factor I have noticed is we had a period of 5 straight years without acorns due to late frosts.  When the acorns were abundant prior to this spell, the birds were thick and it looked like someone took tillers into the woods there was so much scratching.  Almost no scratching to be found now.

This is what they were discussing on the podcast.  Chubbs was saying he noticed areas that had bad acorn crops for a while, the birds would move out and seem to not come back.


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[Dtrkyman]

Midwest farm country turkeys consistently use the same places for years, western mountain turkeys not so much!

Habitat in constantly changing, birds follow the select cuts and burns!

[aclawrence]

Midwest farm country turkeys consistently use the same places for years, western mountain turkeys not so much!

Habitat in constantly changing, birds follow the select cuts and burns!

This might be my year now that it's been select cut. Maybe they'll be back


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[cgarner1]

Has happened in several areas around me. I personally think here, the loss of habitat and the concentration of hunters due to lack of huntable land has been the biggest down fall here and I'm sure in many other places. I know food and habitat will shift birds place to place. We are getting megasites,  subdivisions, apartments, all the way down to dollar generals going up at a really alarming rate and no addition public land. It don't take a rocket scientist to figure out what that does