Just finished a couple weekends of deer scouting and saw quite a few birds at one of my IL tag public properties. Full blown gobbling/strutting display by 5 mature toms with 15 hens. Glassed them right from my parking area. There are lots of crop fields there and my strategy is to hike perimeters of the remote fields the day before my hunt, and set up over the most active dust bowls. This has worked well in the past. Likely keep running/gunning to a minimum for a 4th season tag. The toms are far too wary by then. Decoys usually spook them off but never dust bowls! I miss watching them interact with the dekes but that's the reality at the properties I hunt........with the exception on my 1st two IL hunts.
Last edited by Zim; 03-14-2017 at 03:18 AM.