RTGobbler

I agree with everything said. You cannot hear birds and get birds from your bed so it is always good to go out. Success is a function of the # of hours in the woods. That being said, if it is raining then I am sleeping. I have never had much success when it raining and foggy. But honestly a big part of this is that I just hate being wet. This morning in 3P it was very foggy and a light mist at 4AM. Had no gobbles from the roost last night and didn't have a good plan for the AM anyway. So back to bed I went. I will be out in an hour or so doing a little walking and talking.

Wooowwww that is an awesome setup. Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Nice bird! Great story! Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

I have more calls than I ever need, but then again you never know when your going to need that rarely used call. I have about 8 to 10 diaphragm calls, and don’t think there is a favorite, whatever is working at the moment. I do use them a lot, because of the movement and volume of the calls, but I tend to think that they do not sound "right". I have rarely heard a real hen sound like that. I tend to enjoy the fiction calls much more than air blown calls. I have a Quaker Boy Aluminator call that I have been using for years. I think it is a great call, and has pulled in a number of birds. I also feel like a good box call hits them just right. In the end though my go to call is the one that makes them gobble. I never know what that call is, so I just rotate through the vest until I find it.

Good luck today! Sucks to be going back to work for a full week. Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Yepper, if your not in the woods you cannot hear them and you can't chase them. If you have the time always stay in the woods. Try to find a spot with good acoustics and just sit and listen, don't call, just listen. I've chased many a bird that went off randomly at 10:15. Up in 3A heard no birds all day yesterday, a continuation of the action on Friday. However today down in 3P I got a nice bird, and saw a number of hens with him too

Thats a great story, congrats to you both.

Well Friday and Saturday morning were busts where we had the birds gobbling opening day. Not a peep. Covered a lot of ground too. I had to head home, Saturday afternoon so packed up and said good bye to the parents and brother, and headed back down to Orange County. We had a BBQ over at some friends for the race, and then I headed out to roost some birds in Sterling Forest which is very close to home and where I do a lot of hunting. TL;DR - Roosted a bird last night, snuck in real close (closer than I wanted), got a great tree show, dropped him at 40 yrds. 20lbs 9.5" beard and 7/8" spurs ". Pics below On the way in to roost I saw some bird land on a ridge line, but they never made any noise. So I walked in a bit deeper and just sat and listened for an hour but didn’t hear anything, so I gave it a hoot around 8:15 and nothing. Started walking out, and stopped where there is a nice valley between two hills and gave it a hoot. BOOM!! There he was!! Pulled out the map and figured out where he was and marked it for the morning. 3:50 AM this morning the first alarm goes off and I am out of bed by 4:10. Gear on and out the door by 4:30. Pulled in to the lot by 4:40. And tripping on sticks and holes in the dark by 5. Went in a little bit and just listened for a while hoping he would sound off, but nothing. It was starting to get lighter out and I wanted to make sure I had time to reposition, so I gave a hoot and BOOM!! There he was. I figured he was about 200 yrds away right on a ridge line, right about where I pegged him to be last night. So I start pussy footing it over in the direction of the ridge line, quiet as I can be. He gobbles again while I am walking and think I should close the distance a bit more. The whole time I am walking I am scanning the trees looking for hens or other birds. I find a tree that looks good and do a scan for a better tree (grass is always greener right??) and see one that I like and start moving over there. That’s when I see him, about 40 yrds away!! Closer than I wanted to be!! So I slowwwwlllly get back to my first tree at sit down as slow as I can. As I am sitting down he starts gobbling again. For the next 45 minutes I got to watch him gobble and strut on that tree branch. It was quite a show. It’s amazing to me he didn’t fall off. He was gobbling about once every 5 minutes, and all I wanted to do was tell him to shut up so he didn’t attract anymore hens or hunters . Around 6 he flew down, going away from me. That was actually the best case for me, well maybe second best, and I could still see him strutting around. On the ground he was quiet for a while, but as hens started flying down to him he was heating up again. I kept the calling very low key, a cluck or two every once in a while to know there was another hen for here. After about 10 minutes of him strutting around at 50 yrds behind some trees with 2 hens, a third hen comes in from my left. He sees her and starts moving to her, right towards one of my open windows. He continued that way and right into my window and boom went the 870 and he folded right there. It was a 40 yrd shot, and that is about as far as I would comfortably shoot a bird but it was true.

Not a gobble yesterday or today. Not on the evening roost, or the morning roost, or on the ground. Crazy how one day they are blowing up from 9am till noon and then nothing for the next two days. Well that's turkey hunting. Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

I recently did some research on this because I needed rain gear for the rain day that was May 1st. After reading a number of forum posts on a very popular archery forum and other places on the web, I went with stuff from Rivers West. Wasn't too expensive (in terms of rain gear), 140 for top and bottoms. Very light weight, and very quiet. It didnt rain too much so I didn’t get a chance to test it in a soaking rain but so far so good. The Kuiu stuff and Sitka stuff was also highly recommended by a lot of guys, but 500 - 600 was just too much for me to pay for something that will get used 2 or 3 times a year. My brother and step dad got some Frogg Toggs stuff. Very inexpensive, like 50 for the set. Seemed to work, but wasn't too quiet.

I think that is normal. In my experiences there will be more gobbling and action before they fly down and then for an hour and half or so after that. That is when that gobbler is bringing his harem together for the day, letting the ladies know where he is. Once he has a good group established he will quiet down, and do his thing. He might gobble occasionally after that, but in my experience it will be very difficult to split him from the hens. However that is not to say you won't find a lonely bird, or a bird who has hens and wants to play mid morning. It happens for sure, in fact I didn't hear a gobble until 9:30 on opening day, then chased that damn bird the rest of the morning. He's still alive though, so he won that round.

I would agree with the losing the decoy, but I have always been on the fence. I think it is tough to know when its a good move and when its bad. There have been times where the bird sees the decoy and stops, or doesn’t see a bird where he knows there should be and stops. The birds make no sense . Same thing with the real hen, a lot of guys would tell you to get rid of her as soon as you heard that gobble. The thought being she is going to go to the tom and take him away. But your experience says otherwise...like I said the birds make no sense. Good luck!

Nice bird! Congrats!

Great bird, and maybe an even better picture. That log setup is awesome.

What a day! I don’t think you could have a better day without getting a bird, well maybe you could. Went out with my younger brother, and the old man. We got moving a little late and didn’t get out as early as we wanted and nothing was gobbling from the roost. So we decided to head to a spot that we all have take a few birds. Grabbed a nice spot and called until 7 and decided to start a little walk and talk (or run and gun). Did our standard loop and still was stuck with nada, not a gobble. So now its about 9:30 and we decide to go grab some breakfast at the house and then come back in an hour. As I am throwing my vest in the truck I hear it, the greatest sound in the world, "Groooboboboboble"! So run over to their truck and say lets go! Up the hill! We start moving back up hill on a log road and get about 300 yds in and I give it a yelp yelp yelp, and get the response we are looking for about another 300 yds in and to the north. So we decide we are going to end up about 50 yd or so from where we started the morning. We get there and I give it another call and suddenly we get a single gobble followed by a chorus of 4 to 6 gobbles at once. OK OK, more than one bird is there! But they are much closer than we thought, so my brother and I grab a near by tree while the old man heads off to be 40 or 50 yrds behind us. We start calling and we continue to get the chorus singing back to us and moving closer. Finally I spot the movement and see two birds, followed by another 3 I think headed our way. I whisper to my brother that they are coming to get ready. We both see we are now dealing with a group of jakes, most with 2 or 3 inchers. They end up about 15 to 20 yds away, but they are not giving my bro a clear and clean shot. Either they are so close together or they are behind something. Then I hear the lone gobble again, trailing about 60 yrd behind. Now I know that these jakes are nothing more than advanced scouts and the king is still on his way. I tell my brother to hold off from shooting the jakes because that lone bird is the boss. Well me and my old man are still calling but everything went pretty quiet, except for the occasional lone gobble that told us they were still close. Then my bro whispers to me "Oh my god, look over there" Takes me a little while until I see the boss standing on the ledge above us in full strut about 100 yrd out with his bright white head. He was a big bird, and he knew it. Now me and my old man, having played this game together a few times started a cadence of him calling and me gobbling back to him. Trying to get Mr. Tough guy pissed off and come beat me up. Well he apparently didn’t care. He gobbled back at me every time, but instead of coming over to us he jumped on top of a big rock and spun around in full strut. He knew he was . Finally some real hens came and took him away. My brother and I chased them the rest of the AM, and got within 100-150 yrd of him a few times. But every time we got close those hens pulled him in the opposite direction. Didn’t matter if we were above them or below them. Last gobble we heard was at 11:45. Looking forward to tomorrow morning .

Got in late this morning, but not too late. Nothing on the roost at all, and nothing until 9:30 when we were heading back for some breakfast. Heard a gobble as I’m getting in the truck. Turned around and headed back in. Ended up seeing 4 or 5 jakes, a big tom, and a number of hens. Chased them around the rest of the morning. Not a bad opener.

Sounds fun, I'm in.

This to me is a very interesting story. I have been thinking very hard about issues like this recently as my wife and I are looking to buy a home in Rockland. One of my requirements was the ability to safely shoot a bow. I had thought long and hard (maybe not hard enough) and determined that I would need to build an 8'x8' backstop out of rough cut 1"x10". Even with that I realized that there could be no house within what I called a "safety cone" so that if I did mess up only trees were at risk. This makes me rethink it again. As a kid I learned how far an arrow could go out of a modern compound. 400 yds is nothing at the right angles. When I was a kid(10 or 12) my best friend and I would try to shoot arrows across a meadow as far as we could. Not very smart, but we could see everything from where we were to where the arrows landed and knew no one was there (the awesomeness of Greene Co.). Even with a 40lb dawn the distance was amazing with 65 to 70 lbs the distance is frightening.

Got a lot of nice and fresh snow today. Went out this afternoon to try and cut some tracks, but did not come across a single deer. Called it quits after I met up with a hiker and his dog. I did cut some coyote tracks, and found where I believe it was bedding down. I think the folks with the dog pushed it, because the tracks were somewhat fresh and they cut my older tracks from an hour or so before. Tomorrow should be a nice day for some tracking! Now sure if I want to take a flier with the bow or the muzzle loader.

I have seen more bears in Sterling in the last few years than up in the Catskills. Two springs ago while turkey hunting I saw a sow and two cubs, and I have two bears from earlier this fall on the trail cam. This season have seen claw marks on trees, and even had what I assume is a bear "taste" my tree stand. So they are there. I have not seen one where a shot was presented though. Sterling is not a bad place to hunt, but you need to find the "uncool" spots. There are a number of very popular spots that get a lot of pressure, but there are many spots where you won't see any other person all season. I hunt one spot that is not a far walk in, and in the last 4 years have seen one hunter, 2 hikers, and many deer (although none since bow season this year). As many said, get your permits and display them in your car. They do patrol the many parking spots to check for these things.

After many years of wearing Columbia wool, various random undergarments (scent lock baseslayers, sweats, union suits, bulky crap, etc), heavy gloves and mittens, I decided it was time to change. This season I went with the following: - A very tight fitting poly compression top and bottom (from Predator Camo) - A Minus33 expedition weight merino wool top and bottom - 380 gram heavyweight fleece (also from Predator) - Very light weight fleece gloves - Hard warmer muff (one of the best purchases ever!) - Fleece/wool beanie or a thermal UA cap - Fleece neck gaiter. That setup has kept me more than warm all season, too warm some times. Its very light and compact as well, so your not bulked up or too heavy.The only time I had an issue was when it was in the teens and 20+ mph winds. I added a layer of fleece thermals at that point and was good. Had to do that maybe 2 or 3 days this season. Walking in I will pack everything but the poly compression to stay dry. The hike in is about .5 to 2 miles and 500 to 2k feet in elevation depending on where you decide to sit. Sweating is not really avoidable in this case, so you want to have the least possible on for the walk. You freeze when you get out of the truck, but the first section is really steep so you warm right up. Then you dress when you get there. Feet for me are always an issue, since I was 13 and 14 going up with the old man to this day my feet are always an issue. Literally when I take the boots off an touch my feet they are freezing to the touch. I have tried different boots and socks without much luck. If the boots are too heavy my feet are killing me after the walk and I end up with cold feet anyway. So now I use a pair of light weight Danner boots (200 gr thinsulate), and merino wool socks. Seems to have worked OK this year, but still cold. I have started to try and work the toe heaters into the mix but it is tough because I find them uncomfortable. I also have a pair of 1000gr rubber boats that I only wear in the swamps because they are so bulky and heavy. Stupid toes and feet.

Real trees are the best. Last few years we have gone and cut our own. Its a lot of effort, but we both really enjoy picking our own tree, cutting it down and bringing it home. Nothing like the smell of real fresh tree.

Not a bit if the 1 to 3 inches that was predicted fur 3P. Was hoping for just enough to be able to cut some tracks. Instead we have an obnoxious layer of ice.

Grew up in Greene and I spend a few weekends hunting 3A in Greene county, the Round Top area. Not much for deer sightings or sign up in the mountains. Down low there were more, but mostly doe sightings in our area. There was one very nice 8 taken, great spread, great mass. Just plain beautiful deer.

The wind map is awesome, i have seen that in the past and it is always cool to watch for awhile. There is an android app from mossy oak that shows your "scent cone" I have used it a few times and is seems to be close to right in my experience. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scoutlook.hunting