ORIGINAL: mouthcaller
How long are you hunting in the morning?
If they are really henned up and you only have 4 hours to hunt sleep in and go hunting from 10-2. I've done better at midday when turkeys are in this portion of the breeding cycle then in the early morning. You aren't going to call them away from live hens. Let the hens leave the gobblers and then you have a shot.
Adam, lets hope so bud
mouthcaller,
In Ohio we can only hunt till 12. I have tried mid-morning hunting on a number of occasions, but the only thing i have produced are "shock gobbles" with loud cutting. No chance of them coming in from that. The times they have shock gobbled it is usually from directly under their roosting tree around 10-1030. I know they like to roost up on this ridge at the back of my property. The main problem is WHERE DO THEY GO once they fly down. I dont hear hens, jakes or the gobblers after 645 or so in the morning and i dont know where they sneak off to.I watch them fly down from the roost at around 100 yards or so almost every morning, im just afraid to bump them off if i get any closer and this spot takes a good 30 minutes to walk to from the road. Its a major PITA to get too.
What im going to do this weekend is set up my blind around 5 in the afternoon as quite as i can (also as close as i can) and im going to try and mark the trail in so i can enter silently in the early AM. Im gunna use a full strut decoy too which i havnt tried on these birds in the most open space i can find. I have had some of the jakes wonder into my setup but im not intersted in them.