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- Sep 29, 2022
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So @Ninering62 and I have had a pretty darn good opening weekend.
Started yesterday, hearing tons of birds before we even called, and we ended up passing by 3 decent birds (8" beard or so) right after first light hoping to see one or more of the monsters that have been showing up the past week.
Had two different big herds of 9-12 jakes with some hens mixed in come by, jakes were two different age groups one with tufts and one with little 3-4" beards. Jakes and hens got awful close up, within a few yards. The three birds we let walk earlier tailed one of the groups in, but this time they stayed out of range - good for them, I was considering dropping the hammer on the biggest of the three.
Quick coffee input-output cycle and we hit a second blind, but the woods had gone totally quiet so after a while we packed it up. On the way back to the house, Ninering62 got all exited about seeing birds out in the treeline in front of our original blind (as frequently happens to us) but I saw one fly off and noticed they were in fact buzzards. Or now, as I can't say without giggling a bit - short-neck turkeys.
This morning started with the woods fairly quiet but we did hear one group of birds making noise maybe 1000 yards off from us on the other side of the house down near the driveway entrance. Really quiet all over this morning, we stat in the blind for a few hours and got visited twice by a group of 3 hens that had 3 others drift in and join them - making not a sound as they scratched and pecked their way past us. We continued to occasionally hear birds on the far side of the next property over, but they never seemed to be moving in our direction.
We did our coffee cycle in record time by skipping the coffee since our alternate blind is about halfway between where we were and where we were hearing some birds. As we are leaving the porch, we see two pairs of jakes crossing the field, one pair by our morning blind and the other on the fence line. We quickly made it to blind #2 setup which is somewhat obfuscated from view from where the birds were. We got settled in quick, and the jakes came trotting on by as a group of four. Not walking, not running in a panic, just a nice little jog down the range....
We had one possible shooter bird that came in but stayed hung up about 50 yards out in some brush and wandered off, a bit of calling brought him back 30 minutes later but he still hung off way too far for a shot, sitting there and fanning. At this point, we're in almost full sun and I'm starting to bake like a potato so after a bit more waiting we called it a weekend.
Started yesterday, hearing tons of birds before we even called, and we ended up passing by 3 decent birds (8" beard or so) right after first light hoping to see one or more of the monsters that have been showing up the past week.
Had two different big herds of 9-12 jakes with some hens mixed in come by, jakes were two different age groups one with tufts and one with little 3-4" beards. Jakes and hens got awful close up, within a few yards. The three birds we let walk earlier tailed one of the groups in, but this time they stayed out of range - good for them, I was considering dropping the hammer on the biggest of the three.
Quick coffee input-output cycle and we hit a second blind, but the woods had gone totally quiet so after a while we packed it up. On the way back to the house, Ninering62 got all exited about seeing birds out in the treeline in front of our original blind (as frequently happens to us) but I saw one fly off and noticed they were in fact buzzards. Or now, as I can't say without giggling a bit - short-neck turkeys.
This morning started with the woods fairly quiet but we did hear one group of birds making noise maybe 1000 yards off from us on the other side of the house down near the driveway entrance. Really quiet all over this morning, we stat in the blind for a few hours and got visited twice by a group of 3 hens that had 3 others drift in and join them - making not a sound as they scratched and pecked their way past us. We continued to occasionally hear birds on the far side of the next property over, but they never seemed to be moving in our direction.
We did our coffee cycle in record time by skipping the coffee since our alternate blind is about halfway between where we were and where we were hearing some birds. As we are leaving the porch, we see two pairs of jakes crossing the field, one pair by our morning blind and the other on the fence line. We quickly made it to blind #2 setup which is somewhat obfuscated from view from where the birds were. We got settled in quick, and the jakes came trotting on by as a group of four. Not walking, not running in a panic, just a nice little jog down the range....
We had one possible shooter bird that came in but stayed hung up about 50 yards out in some brush and wandered off, a bit of calling brought him back 30 minutes later but he still hung off way too far for a shot, sitting there and fanning. At this point, we're in almost full sun and I'm starting to bake like a potato so after a bit more waiting we called it a weekend.
