rookie ?

[cjordan]

From where I was he was between me and the field, and didnt sound like he was far from the field. Skeeter your right I should have been a little more specific about the thicket. most of the trees are about 8" or so at the bottom but the underbrush is pretty thick. I still need to learn some more about that area. Im going to try to get off early enough this week to roost them by the field. I hate to say Im gonna get em before it over, but if I dont it sure wont be from a lack of trying.

[bbcoach]

Go out the evening before a hunt and try to locate birds.  When you have located some, watch where they go to roast and get in tight to them the next morning.  If you can't get them to play, try to antipicate where they are going and make a loop to get in front of them.  As the guys have said, Be Where They Want to Go.  Be patient and things will come together.  Good Luck.

[Skeeterbait]

I had a situation about 12 years ago on a property I no longer hunt.  Ours was mature pine timber and it ran up to a cow pasture that was not ours.  The line between the properties was a barb wire fence along the pasture running north/south with a few mature oaks on the line.  At the end of the pasture the line continued to run north/south with mature hardwood south of the pasture and our side continued in mature pine.  To the north our property and the pasture bordered a county dirt road.  There was the remnants of an old road running the property line just a few yards on our side although no truck could pass anymore.  There was a old tom that sometimes roosted in the hardwood and sometimes roosted in the pines on our side. I approached a few of times from the south as that was where our camp was.  One day he was on our side but after flydown he moved north away from me and crossed into the pasture.  I could slip up to the pasture and watch him, his hens and a subordinate tom in the pasture but I couldn't call him back.

So later that afternoon I rode out on the county road and found how to slip in thru an old home place and get on the old road along the property line and approach from the north.  I walked the road to the end of the pasture but saw nothing.  I headed back to the truck and found one large tract in a bare spot on the road.  I looked over at the fence and noticed the bottom strand of barb wire was broken on that span.  So I picked a spot 25 yards back up the road where a big water oak bordered the old road and cleared out a little spot. 

I hunted that spot the first two weekends and he was in the hardwood.  I never called to him and just watched him strut in the pasture, then left and went looking for another bird.  I took off work the following Thursday and again came in from the county road and sat under the big water oak.  This time his first gobble of the morning was ahead and to my left on our property. I heard hens wake up and fly down in the hardwoods.  I heard him pitch out and hunkered down and waited.  He gobbled a few times from the ground and went silent.  About 30 minutes later he stepped out in the old road right in that very spot where the fence was broken down and died 8 yards from the property line.