Congrats Zim!!! Thats a nice bird!!

Nice Zim, very nice. That's a heavy bird for this time of year!

Personally, I pound doors until I get enough properties to hunt that I never go on public. My son's 11 though, so I suspect some out-of-state public land hunts are in my future.

Took the wife out today for a mid-morning hunt, we were out for about 2 hrs before it got too hot. No turkeys but she loved listening to the birds and seeing all the mushrooms. Hopefully I'll get her on a bird sometime this weekend, but tomorrow morning is salmon fishing on Lake Michigan...

I was up your way for work last week. From St. Joseph to Holland to Grand Rapids to Muskegon areas. Will return in summer I want to take my wife to Spring Lake/Grand Haven. I stopped to try perch fishing off the pier, but it was closed under construction and brutal cold anyway.


I've been hunting public in many states for years. It's challenging. Sometimes I find a great spot, but it get's discovered and will get exploited very quickly. Definitely a moving target.

Great job Zim. Very nice bird!!!!!

Hey guys, If you are like me, you don’t buy much hunting stuff because you already own one of everything. As I mentioned previously, I decided to tryone of these Ghost Blinds I’d read about for years but didn’t want to spend $200 on. I have to share, this thing exceeded all my expectations. I rate itan A+. Super easy to use and anchor if necessary. Leans outward which gives a guy more room to draw your bow or hoist a gun. The reason I tried it was specific to my heavily pressured Wisconsin turkey hunting property, where I got busted time and again last year from toms avoiding my blind, even without decoys. These toms were definitely conditioned. I could sit under a tree in tall grass, but my knees are bad from carpentry & basketball, so I really need to sit in a lawn chair if on the ground. The height of the blind is perfect for this. I was basically invisible wherever I hunted. Hell I could hunt with minimal cover, almost an open field. Multiple times I had deer show up 10’ in frontof my blind, just feeding, oblivious to me. I’d never experienced this so close before. In my regular popup blind I’d have deer alerted 200 even 300 yards away. No more! One morning I was calling a sly tom to my left and had 6 jakes to my right walk right up and look in my handle hole from 6’. See photos. I was moving around in my chair when both deer & toms were within feet of me no problem!

No I don’t work for this company. Just had to share this. If you want a new toy to play with that actually works, this is it! I looked all around but could not find a sale price for one, so I paid the full $200, but with no regrets. It was worth every penny. BTW it was not too bad to tote around. I did not want to spend the coin for one of the backpack carriers, but I did OK carrying it with just the handle. For most of my hunting I was hiking through a muddy swamp about 1 mile round trip. In a month of use I can’t recall one critter altering it’s behavior due to my presence. Pretty amazing. Not sure if I’dbow hunt deer with it due to scent, I like to be up high in a tree, but for gun hunting fields, I will definitely be using this in the future. Main reason is you can be mobile and move around. Deer don’t need to get used to it. The lookout holes make a perfect gun rest when you sit in a lawn chair. I highly recommend this toy!

Hey all,

Looks like we might be behind. Check out the score thread. There's no required pic listed in the rules this year. SwampSlayer's bird plus Mookyj just bagged a jake for Team 1 puts us about 8 points back.

Zim - we actually went out of Grand Haven yesterday. We went 4/5, landed 3 chinook and 1 steelhead. My son reeled in the biggest, about a 10lb 3-yr old king. Probably would have put a few more in the boat, but I forgot our coats and had to turn around after we already left, we lost 20min of power hour...

Score Updates
 

I lose interest in this thing since scores are updated so infrequently. I'm not gonna add them up to see how close it is. Did you add in my 12 point upgrade? Went from 53 to 65 Thursday.

Not sure. Team 1 would add about 90 points if MookyJ's jake and Swampslayer's tom counted. However, Superstrutter just posted on the score thread and indicated he's not counting birds without a pic. If that holds, then only the ~25 pt jake will count, and we'll be comfortably in the lead with less than a week. With that said, Swampslayer could send in a pic this week and put us behind...but that seems unlikely, considering he bagged birds almost 2 months ago and still hasn't posted a pic...

Regarding the score updates, Superstrutter actually does a decent job, but there are so few of us that hunt in May - especially after May 15 - that the scores always get updated more slowly towards the end. I also don't recall the contest being this close this late in the season...

as of 6/1 we are still ahead...

I think congratulations are due to Team 4. Great job!

Is it official yet, did we win?

Ya I'd like to get that prize money deposited.

Good job everyone. Close win. Every turkey mattered.

Congrats everyone!! Its been a fun year!! Now do we stay together for next year?

Way to go, guys! Next year I'll help us win again...at least that's the plan! Of course, that was the plan this year, too, so...

Yeah! Let's go back to back!!!!!

Ya, we'll return to "Defend" next year, so make sure ya'll check back in next spring. Great contest everyone.
-Jake

Congrats!! We couldn't have done it without everyone putting in the effort. I look forward to hitting the woods with yall again next year..

Great Job
 

Congrats to all, ans special thanks to our Captain. I'll be back next year, let's bust some more long beards!

I'll be sporting a new rig next season. Traded my Browning Maxus for a couple of handguns and some cash, and got a Remington 870 SM with shur-shot stock and a 23" barrel. Got a Sumtoy Customs choke I plan to use (depending on patterning that I plan to do in the next several weeks). It should be much more manageable to carry this thing around in the woods than my Maxus was. If I can get it to pattern like my Maxus did, we'll be golden. The only things left to do on it are to decide if I want to use the iron rifle sights that came on it, or go with a Burris FF3 like I used on my maxus, or a 1-4 power scope. Leaning toward one of the first two options right now. I know the iron sights would work fine, but I really liked the FF3 on my maxus, so not sure that I want to "downgrade" so to speak. We'll see.

Anyway...not really important info at all, just wanted to talk about my new toy! Ha!

new gun
 

Sounds like a nice rig, not trying to top you but will be fielding a new turkey sniper myself. Won a Beretta A300 NWTF edition at the Palmetto Sportsmans classic. Added a beartooth stock riser, Beretta weaver base & a Vortex Venom reflex sight. Only thing lacking is a jebs headhunter choke. The truglo choke that came with it is junk. Knock 'em down Bibleman.

That sounds like a good set up ya got there. If you need someone to break it in for ya let me know :s2:. I got talked into going to a Camo and Pearls NWTF banquet with the wife on Friday. Looks like a bunch of womens stuff in the auction and raffles. Hopefully there will be a gun or 2 to get some ticket for lol. The last banquet I went to I won a Saiga 12 gauge. Not sure what I will ever use it for though. I've had it for 2 years and never fired it. Kinda kept it around incase all hell broke loose during the election lol

No luck for me at the NWTF banquet. Seemed rigged. All the big money raffle items went to people that was working it. Oh well win some lose some lol

I won big in the western hunting lotteries this year. I think my best line-up in 20 years applying: AZ Kaibab archery deer, AZ unit 1 archery elk, WY unit 108 pronghorn, Iowa zone 5 archery deer. All overlap very conveniently!

Sweet, springspur! And congrats on the draws, zim!

I haven't been able to pattern my new gun yet, but will be testing out the stock Remington super full turkey choke that came with it, a jelly head, and a Sumtoy using Maxblends...got a ton of that stuff left, so going to see which one performs with it best before considering other loads in the future. It's been too hot, and I've been too busy to get out and shoot.

I have had great luck using the Jellyhead and Winchester longbeard XR #5 with my old mossburg 835.

Hey Capt Kellyguinn
 

Guess it's time to update the user id spot to add 2017 turkey hunting contest champs, I'll get my son to do mine for me.

lol Got it done. Starting to get a bit long though.

Kellyguinn
 

Getting too long! looks like you have Apex Predator problems!

Ha. With the contests taking a hiatus I'm sure I will get rid of all that as well. No reason to brag on something that is no longer happening lol

2018 rejects
 

Will we be defending next year?

Hopefully. Not sure if the admins will keep this thing going or not. All the deer hunting contests have been buried by the sounds of it

That'll depend on interest in the contest I suppose. Hopefully we're able to come back and defend though.
-Jake

I plan to be around to help defend the title!

It's getting close to contest time!!
-Jake