94 degrees is not a pleasant way to start a morning. The walk in was uneventful. As I set the decoy and settled in the fresh scent of honeysuckle filled the air. Once the sun lit this part of the earth, the gobbling started. There were three distant Tom's in the distance, two close together on the left and one further off to the right. I clucked, they gobbled. I purred, they gobbled. I yelped, they gobbled. After a while of this the distance from me to them did not seem to change very much. I decided to cut the distance in half or more and made a move. Re-set, I started a calling sequence again. The response of gobbles was the same. I see movement to my right and get ready. Eventually, a jackrabbit comes wandering past my decoy. He kind of walks up to it and looks it in the face, as if to say " good morning". Suddenly the honeysuckle scent is mixed with the distinct odor of cow poop. I begin sweating under my heavy "old style" woodsman outfit. The gobblers have quieted down and no longer respond. These first two hours have been fun, but for now this hunt is over..... next spot later.
You've never had toms go silent and then come in? My brother and I were out one morning and had a Tom gobble near us when we closed the truck door. Unfortunately we were parked on private land that we could cross, but not hunt on. It was at least a half mile walk just to get to the edge of the public land we could hunt. We stopped half way and let out a very soft couple of tree yelps, that bird gobbled right back. We finally got to our spot, helped a couple times, he responded. Repeated the call a little softer 20 minutes later, he responded, sounded closer, but not a lot. Half an hour later, nothing, clicked and yelped, nothing. Another half hour goes by, nothing. We are on a slight rise just inside the wood line from the private land. Down the hill to the private land is and open field, then some gravel works, then a slight rise and some orchard. The other direction into the public land further goes down the mixed oak and pine ridge into a series of wooded ridges and depressions.
After another half hour of nothing from any direction we start hearing birds on the town owned land behind us. Our experience in the past is that once these birds get there, they don't come back to the ridge until it is time to roost, period, no amount of lovesick hen will bring them back. So, we get up, stretch our stuff joints and look down the little hill to the edge of the field at the bottom,,,,,,, and there, is that tom from the orchard near where we parked, huge, one of the biggest I've seen in the property. Looking right back up at us, in an instant he is turned around and running full speed the other direction and gone.
