I can definitely sympathize with you MikeyS.

I worked a bird one morning in a huge swamp for almost three hours. There was a whole flock and I was tailing them as they moved away. This one gobbler kept coming back towards me, but would then go back to the flock. He finally decided to come to me and caught me in an opening with no cover. He spooked and took off and a few seconds later. BOOM! Game over. It sucks, but it' s always a possiblity on public lands.

Maytom,
You sound like you' ve been hunting in my neck of the woods. I' ve been messed up by idiots more times than I can remember. I have seen it all and just when I think I' ve seen the stupidest one ever, someone else tops him. I didn' t get to work one bird this year without being messed up by idiots. Not one. I finally killed one going back to roost in the afternoon. It was the only way I could get one on one with him.

It' s pretty much the same story here every year. I go before the season and listen to them gobble so I can get an idea where they are roosting and which direction they go after flydown. I don' t see another soul in the woods. Come opening day, I get there a couple of hours before daylight, go on in to my setup and wait for the madness to begin. The trucks start pouring in 30 minutes before daylight and continue to roar up and down the roads until 30 minutes after daylight. You hear crow calling before daylight and owl hooting after daylight. You hear the really intelligent ones roar to a stop, get out of the truck and start owl hooting, crow calling, turkey calling and God knows what else while standing next to their truck. You here turkey calls from 500 yards away.

I' ve watched guys walk right up to a gobbling turkey while owl hooting the entire way and then stand there in puzzlement when the bird quits gobbling.

One of the all time greatest was when I had a bird gobbling one morning and some dude heard him from a main road. The guy proceeds to drive his truck at 20mph down this little logging road to within 75 yards of where the bird just gobbled a few minutes before. Now ordinarily, that truck would have made a lot of noise, but this was no ordinary truck. No sir. It was a work truck complete with racks of tools hanging in the bed. Tools that swung back and forth and made more noise than a sherman tank at high speed.

I' m now sitting there wondering just what in the hell this guy could be up to, when he drives up, jumps out of his truck and proceeds to start rummaging through the tool box in the bed of the truck. He starts taking stuff out of the box and throwing it down into the bed and making more God awful racket doing it. Finally he comes out with what he is looking for. A crow call.

SQUAWK! SQUAWK! SQUAWK! Now I know that turkey was here somewhere. Wonder why he won' t gobble at this crow call???