and ice on the ponds and today while driving home from work there were four hens with a tom struttin and drummin right next to the road. Turkey season doesn't start here for another 3 weeks and the toms are busy. As I am still new to turkey hunting, is this normal to be busy this early in the year (in the midwest)?

P.S. It's also exactly 3 weeks until I am retired from the military.

It's snowing like mad here[:@]

Kind of like pre-rut, they're figuring out who's the boss gobbler.

Three weeks, huh? Are you looking forward to it or dreading it?

Yeah we got about a foot of snow today and still coming down, Turkey season opens in about 25 days.....

LittleChief, after 33 years of service, boy am I looking forward to it. I'll probably get another job until my campgrounds for military personnel gets up and running, but then I plan to settle back and enjoy for whatever time the Good Lord decides I have left.

We finally had gotten rid of all the snow on the ground yesterday and I went shed hunting for 6 hours. Didn't find any sheds but found the skeletal remains of 8 deer. A yearling had a spent shotgun shell about 30 feet from it. It's disappointing to know there are people who will shoot in the excitement of the moment and then not harvest what they have killed. Then when I got up this morning, it was snowing again! Enough is enough! It was gone by the time we got home from church though.