Turkey Hunting
2016 spring turkey season reports
its been a roller coaster of a season hunting atleast 3 days during each of the 5 seasons, started in zone 3 for B and was done by 6:30am was a fun fast hunt.then onto C in zone 2 hunting with a buddy whos a first time hunter seen some birds but never got a shot at a tom. then was back to zone 3 for D and i played cat and mouse with several toms for 3 days and ended up taking a nice jake on the last day i could hunt. back to E in 2 with mu buddy again, and again had some crazy cold weather and weird birds ended up running and gunning several public lands and having a few close calls but again couldn't seal the deal im beggining to believe my buddys a jinx???
then went back up to waupaca last weekend with said buddy this is it! 4th and goal its gunna happen this weekend! get into blind early and its a goregous morning but very still no gobbles til after opening and only a few faint ones at that, then at 6:30ish i look out the right window and see a bird nice tom! get my buddy ready and proceed to watch the show and let the decoys do the work had a jake over a hen out; well this tom makes a big semi circle through the field and eventually just struts and gobbles all the way in to the dekes as im filming i can tell my buddys getting pumped up, who wouldnt!! sooooo eventually when i think we've had enough, shoot um...... pow i see dirt fly and the bird fly up shoot! pow bird runs off and flys away 20yd chip shot! and no tom im thinking wow thats not how i expected that to go!!! o well i felt bad bud felt even worse but we've all been there, its okay lets wait a bit then get ready for the PM hunt, ended up seeing 2 more hens one had a nice beard for a hen and ofcourse that one didnt come 5 ft from the blind. onto another property in the PM and has some jakes and 2 toms come out at about 70yds looked at the dekes and kept going to werever they were going heard a few gobbles but again no shots. sunday am was very slow a few gobbles way off and only 2 birds seen, we tried flanking a tom that was in thick swamp and gobbling to aggresive cutin yelps. i wanted to get just 20 more feet and he gobbled again at about 5 yards, spooked him out uggggg! not going good! regrouped got some chow and water man it was hot sunday! okay last spot, sat down called and stayed quiet we both ended up nodding out for awhile and when i awoke i made some more of the agresive calls and fired up a bird about 100yds away. saw them and i didnt have any decoys out and maybe the wrong call that night they shyed away again so we did another fast sneek up over a hill and had the 2 toms going away gobbling with about 7-8 jakes with them never got a shot. that was the weekend veryt frustrating but it was a blast to be in the woods with a good friend! few things i obserevd was large groups of jakes again this year so i look forward to the next 2 years they should be really good. had a tough time with calling and decoy set-ups too one day one thing 6the next day something else ug darn turkeys! o well sorry for the novel congrats all who harvested a turkey and enjoyed our spring WI woods, theres nothing better!!
goodhuntin all!
Great to see all the turkey harvest pictures. I have had the toughest season I have had in the last 25 years in PA. Very quiet everywhere I have gone. Had 4 crazy gobbling little jakes at about 20 feet one morning. That was fun but was my highlight of the season so far.
Finished out the season with this nice tom today. 20.5 lbs 11 inch beard 1 inch spurs. zone 1 juneau county. Done by 5:45 am.
Good luck to everyone heading out tomorrow for the last day of the 2016 spring turkey season and congratulations to all who harvested a bird this spring.
Good luck shoot straight!
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22 lbs 1 inch spurs 10 inch beard. Zone 1 juneau county. Finally finding toms alone in some areas.
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This was my second year turkey hunting and my first year by myself. Last I had a good friend of mine do the calling and 5 minutes into the 3rd period I had my bird. This year rolls around I was super busy with no time to hunt, but I was able to take my girlfriend's 5 year old son out a couple evenings to go looking for turkeys. He ended up getting all excited and wanted to go. After many nights staying up getting things done and many early mornings of scouting I was able to take him out. The morning couldn't have come together any better the bird talked on the roost, then flew down and walked right in (he's the more beat up one).
This last week I had some extra time in the morning and decided to try for a second bird since the first came in so easily. Wednesday morning I got a super late start and didn't get out there until 9. I was able to hear a pair gobble WAY off in the distance and started to make my way to them when I got distracted. I stumbled upon some morels and pretty big ones at that. After the losing the turkeys I wasn't sure where to set up in the morning so I made an educated guess. As it turns out I made a pretty good guess. Just at legal they started gobbling I closed the last 100 yards and set up within 100 yards of the roost. It turns out it was the pair from the day before and before they made it into range they met up with 3 other toms along the way. The 5 hung up at 60 yards on top of a hill strutting and gobbling for 20 mins before a 6th tom tried to join them and was run off by the 5 of them. Since they wouldn't come any closer I knew I had to make a move, luckily I brought a tom decoy with. I broke out the tom to attempt a scoot and shoot. With 5 toms I had to wait until the time was just right to move in. I moved to just about the top of the hill when I saw the first fan. I lifted the decoy up just high enough for the other toms to see the fan. After seeing the fan they came right in to check out my decoy. With my gun along the side of the decoy and 5 sets of eyes staring at me I didn't think I would have time to get picky, so I shot the first tom that I could see had a good beard. I dropped him at 30 yards! It was an awesome hunt that I soon won't forget!!!
Fri, Sat and Sun watched a bird show up about 8 a.m and work the fence line to the south of me for hours each day.Sometimes he would cross over to the next field. Then he would reappear and strut working about 50 yds back and fourth. Well this morning I moved my blind to that area well before daylight. No way of knowing for sure but believe same bird showed up around 8 a.m. Worked his way to me and he won't be strutting there tomorrow. 31 yd shot 20.54 lbs and 10 in.beard.
Took a kid out in southern Kewaunee county this morn. Lots of gobbling but nothing would come closer than 70 yds. Moved a few times with same results. Drove 1/2 mile to new spot, got one gobble, wouldn't gobble anymore.
Snuck up on him and a hen which took some doing. Kid got a 21.5# tom, with a 10.5" beard and second 4" beard and 1" spurs. I think he's still smiling, was his first bird.
