any other turkey hunters on here?

armedoldhippy said:

opening day has come & gone for me, nothing heard nor seen. a buddy took his wife & daughter with him. set up on a bird that gobbled (they counted, lol) over 200 times in the dark this morning. daylight arrives "BOOM!" some trespassing dickhead crawled up under his roost tree, shot him, grabbed him & ran... i hope his asshole grows shut, and he gets the squirts.

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I would be so pissed. What a dick move to pull.

Does anyone have any cool turkey calls? What do you think is best? Box, pot/scratch or mouth calls?

JustSumTomatoes said:

Does anyone have any cool turkey calls? What do you think is best? Box, pot/scratch or mouth calls?

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If Im in my blind my box calls sound best.
If not mouth reeds for minimal movement and hands free

Earlmarne said:

If Im in my blind my box calls sound best.
If not mouth reeds for minimal movement and hands free

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gotta agree. box calls & slate/aluminum/copper/ceramic scratchers sound more like turks than some turks do, lol. i don't sit in a blind, so mouth calls became mandatory. i'm slowly going deaf these days, damn turkeys gotta nearly be close enough to shoot before i can hear them gobbling...

The only thing I hunt are whitetails. The turkeys we have are the part of the clean up crew that come in daily to clean up under the bird feeders.
They are hilarious. The other day the two in the 4th pic were gobbling at their reflection in the glass slider door and trying to spar with themselves.






They are always peeking in at me




Turkey stumping. "If elected, I promise to ban thanksgiving dinners."


Some recent vids of them visiting the bird feeders. Excuse the audio track as I had the tv on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjatfsG90gg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBlPApKAkT4

great pics, Belleswell!

What beautiful birds! Breeding season is right around the corner.

JustSumTomatoes said:

What beautiful birds! Breeding season is right around the corner.

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hunting for them opens here saturday AM ... ICFW!

wont be till may 1st when i can drop some

15th of april here. Toms are splitting off and fighting. Going to be a good season

I would absolutely love to go turkey hunting.

Drove by a flock this morning. A Tom with 4-5 females. He was strutting and showing off. To bad it was outside the prison in city limits. They are getting to be a nuisance really,lve even seen a cop car herding a huge flock down the street.....

Lit up

That's a beautiful yard. Any fish in that pond?

very beautiful

JustSumTomatoes said:

That's a beautiful yard. Any fish in that pond?

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I love the pond. It is 14 feet deep for the most part and has an aerator/bubbler going 24/7.



It has hybrid bluegills which are a cross between a female green sunfish and a male bluegill. They grow larger than normal gills and are preferred in ponds as they tend not to overpopulate the pond like normal bluegills would. When a male and female hybrid get together to spawn, the resulting brood are about 90 to 95 percents males. This, over time, will keep the numbers from exploding as bluegills are very prolific. They will spawn twice a year in Michigan and three times a year in states in the south.



A predator/prey relationship is still required, which is where the bass come into the picture. They keep the pan fish population from exploding.



The pond has hybrid bluegills, the largest I've caught and released was a 13 inch monster. It also has yellow bellied perch
and the largest one I've caught and also released was 14 inches.


The prior owner of the property told me he used to have boy scouts that would have jamborees on the property and camp out. They would catch and release in the pond and the largest bass caught by one of them he told me, was a 23 inch fish that was almost 7 lbs. That is a huge bass for Michigan.







I have a lot of lakes in the area, and I can catch all of the bluegills I need for the freezer from these local lakes, so it seems wrong to keep the ones I've worked so had on feeding and protecting from blue herons. I've put up fencing stakes and netting around 640' of shoreline to keep the blue heron from eating every fish that swims by him. I put a mess of them around the ponds perimeter and another batch of them in the pond in about waist deep water and then tie wrap netting to the fence stakes. It takes the wife and I combined about 40 hours to blue heron proof the pond, but it's worth it. When a private pond owner scares them off enough times, they will just show up at night and go nocturnal. The netting lets me sleep at night.



In the above shot with the 4 turkeys, one can

see the fence stakes and netting.It's hideous to look at,

but at least the bluegills are safe from the Blue Heron.



Wood duck family and my arch enemy.



Hybrid bluegill bed





Hybrid gills a couple months after restocking



We have all kinds of wildlife that visit, and our faves are the wood ducks. The males are gorgeous. We had a nesting pair return just a few days ago on the 24th. My wife and I put in two wood duck nesting boxes in the small swamp adjacent to the pond. Great fun watching a female raise a family in the pond all summer. We are sad to see them leave in the fall but very happy when they return. When they showed up the other day, they flew around the pond a few times talking to each other. The only duck in North America that can perch on tree limbs.


So cool to see them return.





Here is a vid I shot of them shortly after they arrived.The pond is now about 2/3 ice free as spring is coming on strong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKVcMhi2T5w

I'd be so happy to look out the window and see scenes like that. I never knew all that about hybrid bluegills. I knew there were different types of sunfish... bluegill, pumpkin seed, long ear sunfish, etc. but didn't know there was a high male turnout with crosses. That's pretty interesting. Wood ducks are probably my favorites, the males are just so pretty. What a wonderful piece of heaven you have there.

gorgeous drake woodie picture. best duck to eat there is. aint hunted them since my i lost my black lab. just aint the same...

I watched one fall through in the middle of the pond doing this,
but he was able to get out with just some wet wings.


Grooming


This pic of them grooming is different from your normal pics of turkeys.

struttin’............