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2022 Turkey Hunting Thread
- Thread starter Bowtie747
- Start date
Hunting quiet birds sucks! I'd rather go fishing. Saturday was the same around here, zero birds would talk for some reason. Maybe the pollen was choking them as bad as it was me.
Can someone more in tune with the turkey world shed light on the killing of jakes? Is it comparable to killing of spikes? To me deer numbers are a little more static than Turkey numbers just because the variables that can affect hatching from year to year. That opinion is not backed up by science, but I've let several jakes walk while during deer season I'll kill every legal deer that I can.
A study I read showed that large sums of the hens bread were only bread by mature turkeys so if you’re only killing mature turkeys you are limiting the the number of hens that will get bread. It also seemed to suggest that hens were highly unlikely to breed with Jake’s even if that’s what’s available. It would seem to suggest that if you wanted to have a positive impact on Turkey number you should limit the number of mature birds that can be killed and give more tags to Jakes. In the hard core Turkey world people do look down on killing Jake’s; however, if it is legal and you like the meat then I say have at it. You just won’t have a nice fan, beard, and spurs to mount.
Interesting. I had my pick of the litter this morning on jakes for over 20 min. 5 came in all kinds of fired up and raped my hen decoy til it was crushed flat. One of those hard plastic ones too. Theyre just too easy to kill i feel bad. Like a yearling buck...you can mess with em and they still dont leave. They walked less than 5 steps right past me n my wife and went right to the decoy. Couple of em just sat down a few times and watched the tag team. Hahaha.
i got video. If you dont like foul language dont click play. I didnt think my phone would pick up whispering but you can hear us saying some stupid stuff every now and then. At the end i get one to gobble. They never got spooked. After the video i was flaling my arms around and they just stood there and stared
We never harvest more than a few toms from this spot a yr. Theres plenty left to breed. We never hunt em out. And i can take inventory on how many jakes are gonna be toms next yr. Its a very healthy population.
I thought you were going to have to shoot one of them to avoid getting attacked at one point.
I certainly wouldn't judge. There's nothing quite like working a wary tom and calling him into gun range. But sometimes it depends on the opportunity and the quality of the land you can get on. Between work and having 3 kids under 6, and having to drive at least an hour to get into better turkey country, my opportunities are limited some years. So I say if it is legal and you have a good hunt but a jake shows up instead of a tom, take it if it makes you happy.
Ive shot jakes before. When i started out thats usually all i could call in close enough. And if i call em in and someone i take with me wants to shoot one i always say go for it. Do what makes ya happy. Its just so dang easy compared to an old gobbler. Proof is in that video haha. That makes perfect sense though what @gcr0003 was sayin.
we set up in a creek bottom this morning. Left the house a little late gettin the baby back to sleep and didnt have enough time to get across to the ridge i wanted to be on. I could see birds above us in the trees. Had 3 or 4 birds firing off on the roost and watched them fly down. One of them was definitely a longbeard. Of course they scooted right up to the ridge i wanted to be on and disappeared. Called a couple times and then slowly worked our way up to the ridge. Heard a nice one about a half mile away but they were real quiet this morning except for that possie of jakes. Had to leave by 10am. We were getting blasted with freezing rain. Tomorrow hopefully goes better. Today was opening day.
we set up in a creek bottom this morning. Left the house a little late gettin the baby back to sleep and didnt have enough time to get across to the ridge i wanted to be on. I could see birds above us in the trees. Had 3 or 4 birds firing off on the roost and watched them fly down. One of them was definitely a longbeard. Of course they scooted right up to the ridge i wanted to be on and disappeared. Called a couple times and then slowly worked our way up to the ridge. Heard a nice one about a half mile away but they were real quiet this morning except for that possie of jakes. Had to leave by 10am. We were getting blasted with freezing rain. Tomorrow hopefully goes better. Today was opening day.
I have not had a Jake come in in years. You put me in the last week of a slow season and a Jake rolls in. Yeah he's coming with me back to the truck haha.
Friend of mine killed a Jake down in Tennessee this past weekend with me. Cut the crawl open to see what they had been eating. This guy couldn’t have eaten another bite he so was full. Clover leaves, bugs, walnuts, acorns, roots. In case anyone finds this stuff interesting. The walnuts and acorns were intact too, hull and all. I didn’t know they ate the entire acorn. I thought they usually cracked them open for bugs inside of them.
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Also maybe this is simple but I watched some turkeys scratch. Couple things I learned was what super fresh scratching looks like. Also that they really launch leaves and debris when they are digging around.
So don’t be afraid to really paw at the ground when you’re mimicking scratching. Not saying you need to that loud but I think I’ll keep it in my little bag in my head for ideas.
So don’t be afraid to really paw at the ground when you’re mimicking scratching. Not saying you need to that loud but I think I’ll keep it in my little bag in my head for ideas.
*smacks forehead. No, for whatever reason I didn’t think about it. That’s a darn good idea! I will try to get one next time I can.
Thank you, Bowtie. If you have the opportunity that would be awesome! If it doesn't work out, no worries. I appreciate your response/help! And thank you all for all the info you post! I feel like i beat the thank you drum too much on here, but it's so awesome of y'all!
I'm going to try my crossbow, so I'm also interested in anyone's experience. I've got my work cut out for me, but that's half the fun!
I'm going to try my crossbow, so I'm also interested in anyone's experience. I've got my work cut out for me, but that's half the fun!
My first turkey i ever shot must have eaten every wasp in the field. or some bug that looks exactly like a black and yellow wasp. They were spillin out everywhere. i always cut them open to see what they are eating in different areas. They eat a lot of rocks and stuff to help break down the other things like hard beans/seeds/nuts.
figured out what they were eating..."hoverfly"
looks like a wasp. eating 500 wasps sounded like a suicide mission for any animal lol. Shot him in some public land timber off of a cattle field. probably had tons of em out there. Ive learned turkeys will eat just about anything but I guess they know the difference between real stinging insects and look-alikes.
looks like a wasp. eating 500 wasps sounded like a suicide mission for any animal lol. Shot him in some public land timber off of a cattle field. probably had tons of em out there. Ive learned turkeys will eat just about anything but I guess they know the difference between real stinging insects and look-alikes.