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For those of you TL;DR - condensed version at the bottom.
So, this last weekend was my turkey season...finally drew first season. In Wisconsin you can enter a draw to get early seasons. Otherwise you can buy over the counter and get 4th - 6th season.
Took Friday off, left work Thursday and headed to our lease. Didn't see any turkey's Thursday night, I was hoping to put them to roost and head out in the morning to set up on them. However, the land owner said he has been seeing turkeys on this property every day. So we went with our best guess and setup on the top of a ridge in a little hunk of young tree's around where they piled up the rocks from the field.
Directly in front of us, about 100 yards away, gobbles a tom still on roost. Very nice bird...I watched him for about 40 minutes gobble and strut on his branch. There were probably 8-10 toms/jakes within earshot of our position that morning and all of them gobbling like crazy. Fantastic experience. I had a ton of fun out there.
We had two very large Toms and a Jake with about 10 hens come over a ridge about 150 yards to the west of us, the tom in front of us flew down but was never to be seen again. Called two of the hens over, but the toms and jake stood firm. Closest they got was about 100 yards. We had several hens at as close as 10 feet. This was pretty much the way my entire season would go. I saw a ton of turkeys, got a ton of gobbles, lots of strutting, lots of hen talk and hens responding to my calls and mixing it up in the decoys. No Toms or Jakes would come into the setup. Closest I ever ranged a Tom was 90 yards.
TL;DR - Went turkey hunting, saw a bunch but they never got close enough to shoot.
So, this last weekend was my turkey season...finally drew first season. In Wisconsin you can enter a draw to get early seasons. Otherwise you can buy over the counter and get 4th - 6th season.
Took Friday off, left work Thursday and headed to our lease. Didn't see any turkey's Thursday night, I was hoping to put them to roost and head out in the morning to set up on them. However, the land owner said he has been seeing turkeys on this property every day. So we went with our best guess and setup on the top of a ridge in a little hunk of young tree's around where they piled up the rocks from the field.
Directly in front of us, about 100 yards away, gobbles a tom still on roost. Very nice bird...I watched him for about 40 minutes gobble and strut on his branch. There were probably 8-10 toms/jakes within earshot of our position that morning and all of them gobbling like crazy. Fantastic experience. I had a ton of fun out there.
We had two very large Toms and a Jake with about 10 hens come over a ridge about 150 yards to the west of us, the tom in front of us flew down but was never to be seen again. Called two of the hens over, but the toms and jake stood firm. Closest they got was about 100 yards. We had several hens at as close as 10 feet. This was pretty much the way my entire season would go. I saw a ton of turkeys, got a ton of gobbles, lots of strutting, lots of hen talk and hens responding to my calls and mixing it up in the decoys. No Toms or Jakes would come into the setup. Closest I ever ranged a Tom was 90 yards.
TL;DR - Went turkey hunting, saw a bunch but they never got close enough to shoot.
