What’s your next play?

[Bottomland OG]

Well crap. You gave it all away before I read the rest.

Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

Lol!! Sorry about that.

All good, but since you ruined my fun, I will throw another one out there. It's a real-life situation that happened to me.

Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

I hope it ended the way you wanted it too. That was my last day of season last year and felt good about how everything played out as I walked off the mountain.

[Happy]

Here it is.
You're standing on a high point just inside the woodline of a large field. It's just breaking daylight, and you are hoping to hear a gobbler to go after. It's been a good year. You're down to your final tag and have about a week to fill it. This field is pretty decent sized. Prolly 300 yards wide and 500 yards long. The first gobble you hear is a jake, across the field, and to your right. You don't really pay him much mind, straining to pick up a distant gobble if nothing else. You're so concerned with listening that the crack of a gun makes you jump. You catch a turkey flying towards you from the other side of the field, only to watch it fold up and hit the ground about halfway across. It's not dead, but pretty bad off. You hustle across the field and catch up to the turkey, and it's almost dead, so you put a boot on its neck and yell across the field to the person who shot it to come get their jake.  About a half minute later, you hear them fire up an atv and take off at a high rate of speed. That leaves you sitting with a dead jake that you didn't kill. What's your move?

Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

[Bottomland OG]

Here it is.
You're standing on a high point just inside the woodline of a large field. It's just breaking daylight, and you are hoping to hear a gobbler to go after. It's been a good year. You're down to your final tag and have about a week to fill it. This field is pretty decent sized. Prolly 300 yards wide and 500 yards long. The first gobble you hear is a jake, across the field, and to your right. You don't really pay him much mind, straining to pick up a distant gobble if nothing else. You're so concerned with listening that the crack of a gun makes you jump. You catch a turkey flying towards you from the other side of the field, only to watch it fold up and hit the ground about halfway across. It's not dead, but pretty bad off. You hustle across the field and catch up to the turkey, and it's almost dead, so you put a boot on its neck and yell across the field to the person who shot it to come get their jake.  About a half minute later, you hear them fire up an atv and take off at a high rate of speed. That leaves you sitting with a dead jake that you didn't kill. What's your move?

Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

The first thing I would do is call dnr and we would have to go from there.

[Happy]

A reasonable answer. Keep in mind that there are two officers in the entire county.
I know I didn't provide that info beforehand. I once called in and reported myself for tagging a deer incorrectly, and the officer couldn't believe that I was just trying to make it right and hadn't been caught. He told me he had more important things to do and to shut up and eat the deer.
Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

[Bottomland OG]

That would definitely throw a monkey wrench in your hunt. It sounds like you have the same 2 wardens that cover my county.

[Sir-diealot]

I think I would dummy up (Not something hard for me) and let the hens do the work for me.

[g8rvet]

I see no need for one of the comments on this OP...

Well, if you mean me then maybe you missed the other thread.   Or maybe you take yourself too seriously.   Or maybe you have no sense of humor.  Definitely a you problem.  If you think an obvious joke would affect the actions of an adult I don't know how to even respond. 

Unless you did not mean me.  Then



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[GobbleNut]

Here it is.
You're standing on a high point just inside the woodline of a large field. It's just breaking daylight, and you are hoping to hear a gobbler to go after. It's been a good year. You're down to your final tag and have about a week to fill it. This field is pretty decent sized. Prolly 300 yards wide and 500 yards long. The first gobble you hear is a jake, across the field, and to your right. You don't really pay him much mind, straining to pick up a distant gobble if nothing else. You're so concerned with listening that the crack of a gun makes you jump. You catch a turkey flying towards you from the other side of the field, only to watch it fold up and hit the ground about halfway across. It's not dead, but pretty bad off. You hustle across the field and catch up to the turkey, and it's almost dead, so you put a boot on its neck and yell across the field to the person who shot it to come get their jake.  About a half minute later, you hear them fire up an atv and take off at a high rate of speed. That leaves you sitting with a dead jake that you didn't kill. What's your move?

Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

The first thing I would do is call dnr and we would have to go from there.

Yep, assuming I have cell service, I am calling the DNR/Game and Fish, explaining what happened, and asking them what they want to do. 
Now, in my region, there are plenty of areas in our turkey ranges that don't have cell service.  That complicates matters a bit.  In that situation, I think the best thing to do is to leave the turkey where it is at, mark its location, and drive to the nearest place with cell service and call. 

Some folks might pick up the bird, throw it in their vehicle, and head to the nearest cell service to make that call.  It is not a good idea to pick the bird up and transport it unless told to do so by those folks...could get a feller in a bit of hot water if transporting an untagged gobbler if he is stopped prior to making that call. 

[avidnwoutdoorsman]

A reasonable answer. Keep in mind that there are two officers in the entire county.
I know I didn't provide that info beforehand. I once called in and reported myself for tagging a deer incorrectly, and the officer couldn't believe that I was just trying to make it right and hadn't been caught. He told me he had more important things to do and to shut up and eat the deer.
Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

But you did say you had a week of season left. What's the next curveball that this was your only day you could hunt that week .

I'm calling the CO/Warden/DNR whatever it is in that neck of the woods or field. Cuz I got a week left to fill my tag so I got time to tell them what's happening this morning.

Why did they run off? Tells me they were up to no good.

Also sounds like your officer would tell ya to keep it if he told ya to eat the deer.


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[Happy]

To answer the questions,
I had more time to hunt. I typically hoard my vacation time for turkey season. That's really not a big factor in this scenario, though. As far as why the guys ran off, I don't know. Roost shooting is not illegal in this state. It's definitely not something that a ton of people openly admit to, but I am sure more of it goes on than people know. There was a decent amount of distance between us, and I yelled pretty loudly, but maybe they couldn't understand what I was yelling and just assumed I was ticked off. As far as the wardens go, I have talked to both of them on more than one occasion. I wasn't worried about looking bad in the situation. They probably would have told me to take it home, and that would have been the end of it.

Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

[Cut N Run]

O.K., I've got a real situation from about 22 years ago that I'd be interested how others here might handle it.  Some might know the outcome, because I posted it in this forum within the last 10 years.

Opening Day, you tag the gobbler you had pegged about 5 minutes after flydown to spend one of your two tags.  What a great way to start the season!  It's nice when a plan works out the way you hoped it might.  You have the entire rest of the season to use your last tag.

The next chance you have to hunt is the following Friday, which is Good Friday, and you have the day off.  You take your best friend (who mentored you) and set him up where you've seen lots of gobbler activity. You move off about 700 yards away, up on the ridge near where you killed your Opening Day gobbler.  Just past daybreak, a gobbler fires up close to where you set your friend up. Good deal! You're expecting a shot at any minute, but none comes.   Several munites pass and the gobbler sounds like he's getting closer.  You toss a few calls his way and he answers back immediately. He's definitely coming your way.  You peel back the hammer on the single shot and get ready for the shot.  The gobbler steps out from behind the young pines.  You cluck once on the mouth call to break him out of strut and it works.   

Looking down the barrel, bead on his wattles, you drop the hammer.  As you shoot, a slight movement behind the gobbler catches you attention, but the single shot's recoil changes your focus.  You look up and two gobblers are flopping where the one stood.  It turns out a second gobbler was following the strutter and he dashed up beside your bird the instant you shot.  You only have one tag left, what do you do now?

Jim

[KYTurkey07]

I wish I could remember my source but I read once a hen is bread, she stores enough of what she needs to lay about three clutches. They say only one breading is all she really needs for the season. When they bread more often than that it's possibly just for fun.

[ChesterCopperpot]

I'd have played it just like you did, silent and waiting, but I'd have shot. They don't need to be bred again. The viability of second nests goes down comparative to first nests but they can certainly make second and even third nests without being bred again. I'm not sure whether jennies are sexually viable (I've not seen research on that, though we know most jakes of the same age aren't). We do know some hens do not prioritize nesting or poult rearing, and that some hens even parasitize the nests of other hens to try and push their genetics into the fold. All that to say, there are lots of reasons the hens may have been doing what they were doing. I think it's a good moral compass you had guiding your reasoning but I don't know that the biology warrants the concern.


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