A friend and I took my middle son out last Saturday for the special youth hunt two days before the Ohio season comes in. We got in place well before sunlight in a pretty good listening spot. Our plan was for me to sit with my son and our friend to sit behind us and call. It had rained the night before and there was very litttle gobbling. We did hear one faint gobble behind us and we were listening to try and pinpoint the location. Suddenly, we hear a very loud gobble within 100 yards and decide to set up on the spot (we were on an old logging road). Before we could get set up we hear a hunter using an owl call coming from the same direction as the gobble. The bird didn' t answer so we decided to set up anyway and hope the hunter moved on.

Next my son see another man and his son coming down the logging road. It was still pretty dark so we just kept still and they passed without seeing us. A few minutes later we hear the owl call again in the direction the other hunter and his son were moving. The owl call was immediately followed bya gobble from the same location. It was then that it hit me that this guy was just trolling along using his owl call and a gobble call as locators. He was doing this all on public land, before daylight and taking a kid with him. I was sitting with a 10 year old with a loaded shotgun and something is comming down the dark road in the exact spot we just heard a gobble. I am pretty cautious but I would never want to point a gun at another hunter. If we hadn' t picked up on the fake owl and had not known there was another hunter in that area my son would have definetly been aiming his gun in that direction and you never know what could happen. It could have been a disaster.

In any event, please keep this kind of thing in mind and think through your plan first. By the way, the guy did come back by us again and saw us the second time. I didn' t say anything because I didn' t know what good it would do at that point out in the middle of the woods. We did go the opposite way for the rest of the morning.