349D report and success

[Cheetah]

I hunted last weekend in zone 349D, far SE corner of MN. I went down Friday evening and hunted through Sunday afternoon with my brother, dad and a friend (who went Thursday). The turkeys were not very active. The usual owl hooting in the morning produced very few gobbles. In fact, I only had one bird respond both mornings. My brother heard one or two. My friend John (Sutty on the forums here) hunted Friday as well and he hardly saw or heard any birds the entire time, so he went home Sunday morning frustrated… While walking the woods nothing would respond to any sort of calling. The only way we managed to get on birds was to walk near private farm fields bordering the public land and try to spot birds to sneak and call to. All in all, we located very few jakes or toms, most birds seemed to be hens. Afternoon and evening hunting produced almost zero active birds, it was simply a spot and stalk sort of weekend.

The good news is that we did harvest two adult turkeys. I shot mine Sunday morning just after sunrise as he followed his flock of 6 hens and 1 jake to the fields to feed. I had located the flock Saturday, and found them again Sunday early enough that I could setup between them and the field. The hens came in to my decoy, and the gobbler just followed along. I didn't even call to them, was afraid they would spook… He weighed 21lb field-dressed.

My brother shot his bird Sunday afternoon at about 1:30pm after we followed a tip from my dad that he saw a flock in a field relatively near some public land I knew bordered the back side of the farm field. We walked through the woods and just as we got to the field one of the turkeys spotted us. The jake didn't know what to do though and simply putted and walked to the side over a small rise. The rest of the flock, not knowing what was going on, came up over the rise right at us as we stood there in the woods. The lead gobbler walked up and stood between some saplings at 40 yards, and my brother was ready and waiting. His bird weighed 17lb field-dressed.

I'm having trouble attaching photos, so here are some links, hope they work for everyone...

Me: http://upload8.postimage.org/231548/photo_hosting.html

My brother:

http://upload8.postimage.org/231554/photo_hosting.html

[Borch]

Congrats on a great weekend!

I got your photo to work but your brother's doesn't seem to be available right now.

[Nova]

persistence paid off, great job. My brothers were down there 2 weeks ago and saw a lot of hens also, not many Toms and jakes. They also had very little response to the calls, but I thought maybe they were just really bad callers

[Wanderer]

Cheetah,

I did catch this post yesterday. My hats off to you two for getting two birds on State Land down there. I know theres lots of birds in that area, but good job just as well.

Like I commented earlier, for us it was throw the decoys away and only call to locate a bird on roost. And sometimes that didn't even work.

I finally got mine by cutting off the flock as they were walking away from my brother as he was calling them. They were goin nuts about 100 yards up the hill from my morning setup, but after they pitched down they got quiet pretty quick. It was the first morning the birds didn't go down first!

I heard a shot and thought it was him filling his tag so I headed up to locate the birds. As I got to the top, they gobbled a couple times so I could zero in on em again. I wiggled under a cedar just in time for the hens to get there and just waited for the toms to follow.

Just lucky timing, but I'll take it!

[Cheetah]

that darn postimage.org site I was using is a bit flakey... sorry. :/