post your hunting/fishing photos

[tonedreamer]

I know I'm not the only redneck guitar player on this forum. Let's see those bucks, bulls, turkeys, bass trout, whatever....

[Stubee]

Nice buck. Smallie?

I've posted a fair number and if you look for thread started by me or hunting/fishing threads I've been in on you'll see quite a few.

[mal paso]

Can you guys explain turkey hunting? I just don't get it.



I mean, I don't get any hunting, but I have no qualms with hunters, at least if a mutual respect comes into play, half my family are/were hunters.

I see turkeys all the time! Why do I want to hunt and or kill one? It just doesn't seem sporty.



They're slow, and stupid. No offense turkeys. Where's the sport?

[Guran]

Crap! Now me wanna go fish...

[Lerb21]

Originally Posted by mal paso

Can you guys explain turkey hunting? I just don't get it.

I mean, I don't get any hunting, but I have no qualms with hunters, at least if a mutual respect comes into play, half my family are/were hunters.

I see turkeys all the time! Why do I want to hunt and or kill one? It just doesn't seem sporty.

They're slow, and stupid. No offense turkeys. Where's the sport?

I don't see em' too often. I've been hunting for 8 years and I've only seen turkeys twice while I was afield. Their eyesight is ridiculously acute. If they could smell like deer, you'd only ever see em' in books and magazines.

At least in my case, Turkeys are a challenge in every sense of the word. I personally prefer deer hunting, but make no mistake that even though they may seem idiotic at times ( I've seen them do REALLY stupid things out of season or when I'm not hunting) they are a wily pursuit.

Oh, and Turkeys only seem slow because they take their time. They can and will vanish quickly if they feel the need to do so.

[Westerly Sunn]

There was a turkey (no- not a fake commercial one) coming up around a buddy's house and he was taking pics of it on his cell phone and working up closer to it every day. He finally got to the point where he could touch it and it would just move farther away...

One day it just never came back. He was so worried about that bird...

[64Strat]

[jlindseyjr]

Originally Posted by Lerb21

I don't see em' too often. I've been hunting for 8 years and I've only seen turkeys twice while I was afield. Their eyesight is ridiculously acute. If they could smell like deer, you'd only ever see em' in books and magazines.

At least in my case, Turkeys are a challenge in every sense of the word. I personally prefer deer hunting, but make no mistake that even though they may seem idiotic at times ( I've seen them do REALLY stupid things out of season or when I'm not hunting) they are a wily pursuit.

Oh, and Turkeys only seem slow because they take their time. They can and will vanish quickly if they feel the need to do so.

The ones up here are so used to people, you can walk up and boot them in the butt.

[jb12string]

Originally Posted by mal paso

Can you guys explain turkey hunting? I just don't get it.



I mean, I don't get any hunting, but I have no qualms with hunters, at least if a mutual respect comes into play, half my family are/were hunters.

I see turkeys all the time! Why do I want to hunt and or kill one? It just doesn't seem sporty.



They're slow, and stupid. No offense turkeys. Where's the sport?

Like Clint said, try hunting them, then tell me they are slow and stupid. Yes, they can become accustomed to people, but try getting close enough to kill a wild one with a shotgun (35-40 yards)

[Guitarzan]

Originally Posted by mal paso

Can you guys explain turkey hunting? I just don't get it.



I mean, I don't get any hunting, but I have no qualms with hunters, at least if a mutual respect comes into play, half my family are/were hunters.

I see turkeys all the time! Why do I want to hunt and or kill one? It just doesn't seem sporty.



They're slow, and stupid. No offense turkeys. Where's the sport?

Coming to that conclusion on one small sample is highly erroneous. Some are accustomed to people and are not as wild and wary, but deer, elk, bighorn sheep in parks are like that too. That does not mean that they are all easy to hunt. Go hunt some genuinely wild birds, particularly those that have been pressured and have had toms shot out of the flock and you'll reach a different conclusion. The eastern turkey tends to be more wiley than the western species, merriams and rio grandes IMO. The osceolas in FL typically are not fools either.

Turkeys behave differently at different times of the year, and flock up during the fall and cold months. They move around in large groups and give deer hunters the impression that they are clumsy and easy to kill, and I suppose non-hunting casual observers might believe that. When toms and hens are mating, they get preoccupied with ritual, fighting, and breeding and somewhat let their guard down, and that can give people a false impression.

Many of have worked toms for hours and not closed the deal. Many of us have chased the one big dominant bird for multiple seasons and not closed the deal. Sometimes, when you finally get him, he may come right on on the string because you got him alone at just the right time and he thought he found a companion. You ask yourself, "what was I doing wrong for so long?"

The answer to the question about turkey hunting is that it is a challenge if you do it by the customary rules. It's not a big deal if you snipe them at long range with a rifle or ride up on them and shoot from the truck. It's challenging because in order to call a to in and get him into shotgun range, you have to succeed in reversing nature. It must be reversed because in nature toms ordinarily do not come to the calling of the hen during mating season, the hen comes to the gobbling of the tom. In the wild, gobbling is a mating call and is seasonal (but there is variation). Domesticated turkeys gobble all the time. Ordinarily, the tom waits on the hen, and while hunting them, they often stick to their nature. Big mature toms may stay on the limb for 2 hours or more in the morning waiting for a hen to come to him, and that makes that bird hard to hunt.

Set-up is a big part of it too. One must set up in a position so that the tom does not arrive, expect to see the hen, not see it, and "hang up" or leave. One needs to position himself so that when the tom expects to see the hen, and it is sooner with open spaces, he will be in gun range. With bigger, ore open spaces, decoys are necessary. Sometimes birds run from decoys for reasons we can't understand, which may include being static and looking phoney, sometimes they help the hunter.

There is a reason that it is called turkey hunting and not turkey killing.

[southwoodgtars]

Here is a few crappie. The tall guy in the pics just moved to Maine and i miss my fishing buddy. I still have my one diehard fishing buddy though! He is a great little dog named jack Daniels. One time I was trolling near some piers and I got a few hundred yards up the lake and I realized he was gone... I turned around and there he was on a pier looking at quite intensly. Now I keepna better eye on him. :)

[skillet]

Turkeys are evil.

[' burn 08]

I don't have many that are accessible at the time, but this is from my first duck hunt. I think I was 17? Yeah, that sounds right. I mostly just duck hunt and dove hunt. i;ve been known to deer hunt on occasion, but not often.



or not, I don't know why it isn't working

[TG]

This was somewhere in the mid-90s at a lake near here. I spent a couple years fishing but got back into guitar playing seriously and lost interest in the fish. Too much rain here.

I put the fish back safely, incidentally. She was 22 pounds and about 3 feet long.

[Muttcaster]

Originally Posted by Guitarzan

Coming to that conclusion on one small sample is highly erroneous. Some are accustomed to people and are not as wild and wary, but deer, elk, bighorn sheep in parks are like that too. That does not mean that they are all easy to hunt. Go hunt some genuinely wild birds, particularly those that have been pressured and have had toms shot out of the flock and you'll reach a different conclusion. The eastern turkey tends to be more wiley than the western species, merriams and rio grandes IMO. The osceolas in FL typically are not fools either.

Turkeys behave differently at different times of the year, and flock up during the fall and cold months. They move around in large groups and give deer hunters the impression that they are clumsy and easy to kill, and I suppose non-hunting casual observers might believe that. When toms and hens are mating, they get preoccupied with ritual, fighting, and breeding and somewhat let their guard down, and that can give people a false impression.

Many of have worked toms for hours and not closed the deal. Many of us have chased the one big dominant bird for multiple seasons and not closed the deal. Sometimes, when you finally get him, he may come right on on the string because you got him alone at just the right time and he thought he found a companion. You ask yourself, "what was I doing wrong for so long?"

The answer to the question about turkey hunting is that it is a challenge if you do it by the customary rules. It's not a big deal if you snipe them at long range with a rifle or ride up on them and shoot from the truck. It's challenging because in order to call a to in and get him into shotgun range, you have to succeed in reversing nature. It must be reversed because in nature toms ordinarily do not come to the calling of the hen during mating season, the hen comes to the gobbling of the tom. In the wild, gobbling is a mating call and is seasonal (but there is variation). Domesticated turkeys gobble all the time. Ordinarily, the tom waits on the hen, and while hunting them, they often stick to their nature. Big mature toms may stay on the limb for 2 hours or more in the morning waiting for a hen to come to him, and that makes that bird hard to hunt.

Set-up is a big part of it too. One must set up in a position so that the tom does not arrive, expect to see the hen, not see it, and "hang up" or leave. One needs to position himself so that when the tom expects to see the hen, and it is sooner with open spaces, he will be in gun range. With bigger, ore open spaces, decoys are necessary. Sometimes birds run from decoys for reasons we can't understand, which may include being static and looking phoney, sometimes they help the hunter.

There is a reason that it is called turkey hunting and not turkey killing.

What he said. Hunting is what you make of it. Turkeys in someone's backyard are one thing. Turkeys in the woods are something else _entirely_ different.

Here's my daughter and I with her 2nd deer. 200 yards, 1-shot with a .243, dropped literally in its tracks.


Here's my 1st mule deer from '84 or so. .30-06 from 150 yards or so. Dropped it.:


My cow elk from 2 years ago. Finding this after the shot was tough! No blood trail, nothing. Just the confidence that I'd made a good shot. 1-shot, .280 from 240 yards across canyon.


Carted/backpacked it out over 2 mi of very rough terrain. Here's the last trip, just before the snowstorm blew in:


That'll give you an idea. I drew for archery deer and cow elk this year. My main hunting gig, though, is falconry. Me and my prairie falcon:

[uriah1]

Does the falcon stir up quail? Pheasant?

[Muttcaster]

Originally Posted by uriah1

Does the falcon stir up quail? Pheasant?

Ducks and pheasants. The falcon doesn't stir them up, I do. Let the falcon go, it flies up to as high as it's going to go (usually to where it's about the size of this period -> . ). Then you flush your quarry. The falcons stoops.

This video pretty much nails it except that they're flying two birds at once which is unusual:

[ASC67]

This is from a few years ago.
49" Musky

[Muttcaster]

Originally Posted by ASC67

This is from a few years ago.
49" Musky

Dude!!! That's a whopping fish.

[mal paso]

Wasn't trolling, thanks for the responses. I see turkeys in my yard quite frequently, and I assume they must be the less wild turkeys, because I can usually get pretty close to them before they wobble off!

I mean no disrespect to turkey hunters on the forum here.