Turkey hunting question: Season over got my birds no complaints (happy to be alive) but …

Either I'm drunk or your sentence structure is hard to follow (or both).

Are you saying you used to hear turkeys gobble on the limb, but this year you didn't hear one on the limb?

I'm not sure if it was a one off deal or not.

But our birds in Central Texas Hill country weren't responding to calls either. The birds were very quiet for some reason this year.

I don’t know if you remember me asking you about the Black Belt and Red Hills 2 weeks ago, but we left Baton Rouge at 12:00pm, pulled up to the camping area at Red Hills around 5:00am, walked 150yards down the first trail we found and hear a gobble responding to the Donkey hewhawing back up toward the highway.

Set up on him, hit a few hen calls and get two more responding back in two other directions. But not once that weekend did we hear any response to owl calls.

Yeah it was weird. They have always replied to an owl call early in the morning on the roast. Always. On a good day I could get the real owls going and basically locate half the damn turkeys on the property. I eventually found certain spots I could do an owl call and it would carry and cover the areas I knew they generally roost. It got to where I could do about half a dozen owl calls and know where half a dozen birds were located and by knowing each bird’s territory and preferences for strut zones use that to plan my hunt. (Sounds cool right but when you start naming birds and knowing this much about them it obviously isn’t a good thing, that last 50 yards was always the key. )

Anyway, we finally managed to kill off a few old birds, (and some died by bobcat or old age) so we finally have a bunch of 2/3 year old killable birds.

But them refusing to gobble on the roost threw me for a loop. I couldn’t find my peacock call to try that but they didn’t respond to anything on the roost this year, i actually had one rustle his feather when I did an owl call, had to be less than 40 feet away, but I decided he probably made me too so left him alone. They would respond to any hen call either.

On my last hunt this caused me to set up 30 feet from one, (didn’t have that tree marked) which was obviously too close and he went the other way. Now once they hit the ground they were golden and easier than usual to call in. (Except the really foggy days, I am not hunting those anymore.)

Now Robert, the 40 pound bobcat was active the last few weeks because I have him on camera in daylight, but they didn’t respond weeks before that. So I don’t think that’s it.

Every thing else other than the early nesting was normal behavior even predictable. I guess I will have to use my thermal binoculars next year if they do this again.

It wouldn’t really matter except I have to use pop up tent on this property, or they see me, and they will not enter the fields without decoys. Easy if two people are hunting, (then you can ditch the tent too with a caller and a shooter) but a pain in the arse for an old man like me

I will take you up on that next year but also a warning, you would be the fourth person I have taken up on that offer, some outstanding championship turkey hunters. But none of them killed a turkey or really got close. They all gave me some advice and I did learn from all of them. It’s not an easy place to hunt for one person, we have significant predator issues and the turkeys can locate a caller easily from several hundred yards away even in the damn swamp. Much much better with a caller and a shooter.

They are large swamp turkeys and almost as skittish as the deer, and our ground is covered with sticks right now and shite from clear cutting, so even if you are a ninja you are sneaking up on these birds.

But seriously, I am always looking for someone to hunt with and you have to be better caller than I am. We have sone monster birds, the biggest I have killed is only 25 pounds but we have many much bigger. Hit me up next year and I will show you the birds and you can show me how to do it.

I have a local guy that you probably know that is retired and lives right there, and gives me a daily turkey report from March to May, so locating birds is not a issue, shooting them is

We had one at my lease. Everybody got last place!