reeltime

maybe sleeping in

happy birthday guys

very nice work

through the course of Biz's investigation he discovered that Bill had an alias of quavers59 and was known to now be hanging out with a bunch of old gobblers that were not suffering from a bad case of cabin fever.

moog, danno did a good job covering this and I am no expert on turkeys but will share from experience over the years of turkey hunting and scouting all over the east coast and midwest some info. wild turkeys and their habits vary greatly from area to area. Its funny how we as a hunter will find area's where what we feel would be great turkey habitat with a good food supply and nesting area but holds no sign of turkeys being there. some birds will move as Dan said up to 10 miles to winter up together while others will stay home in smaller flocks. roosting areas will change and it certainly seems as if it varies by individual birds. some birds have a travel route and roost in whatever trees are available when it gets to be sunset while others are pretty much homebodies and they roost in the same tree on the same limb every night. Some birds will only fly up 10-12 feet while others will roost 30-40 feet up in trees, some will roost and stay in swampy areas and others will avoid those areas at all costs it seems. some times it seems as if the turkeys will roost over or very close to the water for security purposes, almost as if they know that if something tries to get to them they will hear the water splashing or the waterfowl will alert them to approaching danger. some areas just have everything a turkey wants and they will stay there 12 months a year, other areas will hold turkeys all winter but come spring even though the area looks good to us the turkeys will leave. things have changed over the last 40 years in regards to turkey hunting. The modern day turkeys seem to be more reluctant to tree talk and they seem to shy away from more brushy dense areas, likely because of the abundance of predators. Its almost as if they know the ones that talk the most are the first to get eaten and predators include us humans, and lord knows there is no shortage of turkey hunters anymore. I have noticed that turkeys do not like a lot of woods litter, what I mean by that is crappy logging practices. i have seen many good turkey hunting areas ruined where the area was logged and there were lots of logs, tops, mud piles from skidders left behind and the turkeys just do not or will not travel in those areas. its almost as if they know with all that litter in the woods its just that many more areas for the boogie man to get them. lol but in 5-10 years when that stuff rots down the birds seem to move back into the area. most of the turkey nests I have found have been in ungroomed fields, what I mean is fields of golden rod/grass mix but not what we would call a brushy field with lots of small trees. I guess they feel its easy to see predators coming and with little to no brush to impede their vision. Turkeys rely on their vision to survive and is likely one of the reasons they seem to prefer a more open habitat. but then again I have killed birds where you couldn't see 30 yards because of brush. I guess basically turkeys do what turkeys do and turkeys go where turkeys go, I have seen turkeys roost in some crazy area, I have seen turkeys do things that have left me scratching my head. lol. Robhuntandfish if you are still reading this, thankfully our eastern birds while they may range out a mile or 2 they are far more a homebody compared to their western brethren the Merriams, those buggers put their running sneakers on before they fly down in the morning cause when they hit the ground they can motor across the prairie. I was on birds while scouting a few years ago that by noon were 4-5 miles from where they flew down from. But there is no where in NY that looks anything like the prairies of nebraska, south dakota ,southern wyoming where there is thousands if not hundreds of thousands of acres of fields. now time to head to the woods.

many good stories started with , hold my beer. LOL

the hamburg store is one of my favorites of all the cabelas stores I have been to. on my marathon turkey scouting trip in june of 2016 we hit a few more of the cabelas stores. farmington utah, lehi utah, both fairly new stores, both decent sized stores fair number of mounts. rapid city and mitchell south dakota, both stores were nice with mitchell south dakota being the nicer of the 2 and they had a large pond out on the property. they also hod some phenomenal pheasant mount displays and pheasant mount displays for sale. sydney nebraska, for the "original" and the mother store we were really disappointed the store was small, not overly clean nor stocked. and it is in the middle of nowhere, and their mounts we not very impressive but hey they had a $83,000 bass boat for sale in front of the store. the corporate office building across the road was a decent size building. hammond indiana one of the larger stores with lots of mounts, live aquarium, it was clean and they did have a good fishing department. they have quite the boat supply in house. wheeling west virginia, been there 4 or 5 times, decent store, mounts are ok but nowhere near some of the other stores. hamburg pa. really nice store, phenomenal mount displays and the trophy room is always good for an hour of reading the display descriptions. the moutain you see as you walk in the store sets the tone for your visit. the african mount display is nice. the fishing dept. is well stocked. we have been to the hamburg pa store 3 or 4 times as well and would not hesitate to make another trip as it is certainly one of the top stores on our list. scarborough maine, was passing through the area and stopped in at this store it was ok, nothing really stood out and did not really spend a lot of time in the store.

I have never wavered on my stance of wanting to leave NY. things are already in place for the future move, well all except for the actual move date. At this point we have kept our life and debt at a minimum and literally at the drop of the hat and 48 hours or less we could be gone. While NY does offer some good hunting and I would likely still return for hunting and fishing adventures and would likely still have my charter boat for a while... but other than that I would not miss the politics and the the stacks of laws and rules geared towards ruling every aspect of a persons life or business.

just the pre 64 models. my favorite as well.

basement is always a good choice if moisture is not an issue. generally speaking most of your fire load is above the basement so you will have lower fire temps in the basement if the fire starts on the upper levels of the house. my biggest issue with the safes is their holding capacity advertisements, I have yet to see any of them that would hold what they claim without double or triple stacking the guns. without going into details I will just say that at some point I will be constructing a vault of my own in an undisclosed location. lol

kind of late to the party and not sure I can add much worth to what has already been said here by some of the folks that have posted. my take on hunting mature bucks is basically a combination of certain points of a number of the notes posted here. I use trail cams very little and in my experience I generally get maybe 1 cam pic of a certain mature buck and then never again and I don't check cams more than once a month. I do far more long range scouting preseason, I am a firm believer in holding your cards close to your chest. I have said many times that once a buck reaches 4.5 yo you are hunting a totally different creature than a 1.5 or 2.5 yo buck. many times you only get 1 or maybe 2 chances at him and if you get sloppy in your approach of the hunt you may likely not see that buck again or you may never see him if he busts you before you get to actually put eyes on him. what I mean by a sloppy approach is poor stand placement, not paying attention to the wind and thermals, how you approach and exit your stands, how many times you hunt a stand, clearing shooting lanes, hunting too open of an area, scent control, use of scents. All these things in combination can and or will help or hinder your success rate. once you are on a mature buck the first thing you must do is keep your mouth shut, hate to be blunt but with the antler craze of today and the technology of today its easy for internet scouter and even "friends" to find out where you are hunting. this means don't tell anyone no matter how innocent the person may seem, that person could just innocently tell someone and it can snowball from there. your chance of success increases dramatically if YOU are the only one hunting a particular buck. Hiding your vehicle, getting dropped off, hunting dark to dark after being dropped off. some may scoff at this statement but when you are known to kill mature bucks and or turkeys other hunters WILL watch for your vehicle. Patience, not only patience in the stand but more importantly patience to wait until the conditions are RIGHT to hunt that particular buck. believe me I used to be "that" guy that hunted every available minute of every single archery season and spent hours and hours in the woods scouting. still killed bucks but not mature bucks. the last 10 years I have become far more patient, far more days not hunted....I am not gonna lie its tough to set out days but the rewards for me have been far greater in my patience. As has been said your first set in a stand is often times your best chance to connect. As far as stands go, I have very few in open hardwoods or along field edges, if you can not get in or out without getting busted your finished before you begin. if you want to see great distances in open hardwoods well the deer can see you as well. use terrain and cover to enter and exit. I love hemlock trees for stands, if not available I pick multi trunk trees, if neither is available then a tree suitable to get up 30-40 feet. I do NOT clear shooting lanes, most of my stands are 10 yards or less shots, remember you are in THEIR home, if I came in your house and moved your kitchen table how soon would you realize it was moved? It blows me away to see a stand in the woods and for 30 yards around it the person has cut down every single piece of brush. If I notice it as a passer by don't you think the deer that live there will notice it? scent control, some people scoff at it but its in my opinion one of the bigger factors in success or lack of, while true we will never ever be 100% scent free we can do things to help minimize our scent. while scent control practices is a whole long note in itself I will just say that in correlation with first time success at a stand has a lot to do with scent saturation. human scent lingers LONG after we exit the woods no matter how well we think we do on scent control, the more times you visit a stand the more scent you leave behind to tip off the deer.

Judy bought a cool daddy fryer, uses less oil, no where near the steam/oil residue as its a self contained unit. It doesn't take long to heat up and only a few minutes to do up a batch of breaded perch fillets. Last fall we bough an air fryer ( I believe its a 3.7 quart unit) we have done a lot of breaded perch fillets in it. although it takes 6-7 minutes at 390 degrees the fillets are out of this world and no oil taste ( and we always use fresh oil in the deep fryer) one thing I found was that you can not stack fillets in the air fryer. so its a slower cooking process which keeps me from over eating

you big meanie head, now your picking on pygmy you gonna chase him away too....lol

very interesting thread for sure and yes the advancements in prosthetics over the last 20 years is phenomenal.

happy birthday Dan from Judy and I

I use a scotchbrite pad for the slate style calls. For the glass calls first round of conditioning I have a wonder styk ( I believe thats the name) it has a handle with a bend and a stone like a wet stone. I have not used it in many years as the few glass calls I carry in my vest have already been conditioned and now only get freshened with diamond sand paper.

I have the best of all 3 worlds. as much as I despise living in NYS I am 2 minutes from lake Ontario and I can walk out my door and hunt if I choose. Or I can go home and be on the farm with the closest neighbor almost a mile away with literally thousands of acres of land to hunt right from my doorstep.

sweet, nice variety of birds

aint that bad Larry, was one of the most interesting things I have ever watched. the human body is quite an interesting specimen on the inside.

no matter what route anyone takes for hooking up generator power you have got to make sure that there is NO way you are backfeeding the street. There have been numerous occurrences of someone jury rigging a generator hook up and back feeding the street power lines. One of the ones I remember was the ice storm in CT. where 2 fireman were electrocuted when they were walking up to a house fire, the back feeding generator was a block away. I have seen some unbelievable wiring jobs from utube amateur electricians. just a general safety statement, if you do not know what you are doing have an electrician do the installation. also remember that some appliances do not handle generator power very well, without getting into a lengthy explanation to sum it up generator power is dirty current and some appliances, tvs, fridge/feezer compressors can be damaged.

if that doesnt work out i would make it an addition to my camp

just find a large tree branch or a proper diameter dead tree and cut to length and just leave it on site.

same here except the wind is no where near their predicted mph. mom sent a pic of my step brothers new dodge pickup with an 80 foot pine tree dead center from front to back his nice $60,000 truck is totaled. after all the warm weather I think everything is ready for spring. but as usual we get some of our worst storms in march.

yup TF its cruddy out. the woods look to be snowed in tighter than a bulls arse in fly season, the electric phone and cable lines are hanging low from all the snow weight. the snow here is a wet heavy granular sticky mess but even with the 8-9 inches of snow we have i just got back from making a lap through the village I never had to put the truck in 4wd and not a road has been plowed yet. did hit some impressive drifts. scanner has been busy and I would guess it will be getting busier even though they will likely cancel schools here. Bigval, good luck on the goose hunts. I have been seeing some snows here. we don't get the march season here in our zone.

this week has been something and maybe nature knows more than the weather folks. ( I would say weathermen but don't want to offend anyone lol) had our resident robin return and she started building her nest in her reserved spot. monday I saw and heard several red wing black birds, they are here 2 weeks early. the turkeys may or may not be gobbling snows and canadian geese by the thousands headed north 24/7 this week. snows hitting the fields hard this week around here. the turkeys may or may not be gobbling. a lot of songbirds showed up in the last week, they were noticeably absent around here this winter. the bay has a lot of open water and the ice has speared so it should be an early ice out this year. the turkeys may or may not be gobbling already. people are getting the project build bug so the phones been ringing. saw a flock of wood ducks last friday. oh yeah the turkeys may or may not be gobbling.