The Hole in the End of the Stump Turkey Camp officially reopened yesterday for the 2010 KY Spring Gobbler Season.

Good news:

The lights, the phone, and the water came back on without a hitch. I also got a cell signal on the first try.
There were no dead mice
There were no signs of live mice

Bad news:
The back door blew off one of the barns, but that is no big deal.
No Turkeys– at least they weren’t out with a banner to greet me.

Tomorrow I’ll get down to the arduous task of sitting at my shooting bench, sipping coffee in the cold pre-dawn and owling off the front porch when it gets about a half-hour to sunrise. From there I’ll venture to the back of the house and listen for Blythe’s flock to come down off their roost. I don’t expect to hear any gobbles for a week or two, but you never know. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. I should at least hear Blythe and the rest of the hens squabble a little over who’s going to lead the morning procession up to the stock pond.

Weather,etc. permitting we will be opening the official T&TH table at Roosters this Saturday night. If you don’t know who we are, ask Orey, Joanie, or Frank to point us out.

At 5 minutes to sunrise this morning, a gobbler sounded off. He wasn’t on my property, but it’s a good sign anyway. My guess this is Mister Moto, my year-round gobbler. He was still gobbling when I left him at the end of deer season. He has a cedar thicket and a little spot of pasture over on the neighbor’s property. I ‘ve tried to call him over a couple of times, but he does not want to cross the creek. This morning, he had a buddy that joined him. He was even further out. They shared a few gobbles together as the sun was rising and then gave up. It was 27F– I couldn’t blame them.

I owled when I first got out this morning and did so again about every 5 minutes until Moto got cranked up. One thing that impressed me was how upset it made the crows. After about the third barred owl call, the crows started yacking and one came directly overhead. He then let out a string of calls and this brought even more crows. Pretty soon, I had crows for as far as I could hear going off and these in turn set off the roosters way over at a farm on the next ridge. When Moto finially joined in, it wasn’t from my owling, but from the hub-bub created by the crows.

My point in bringing this up is that we have all gotten to talking about locator calls recently. I think it’s important to understand how much a little bit of owling or crow calling can have a powerful effect on the woods. I really set the whole end of the county off this morning. More and more I am restraining my locator calling and focusing on just listening. I see this at home too. I’ll go out on the back porch as I’m drinking my first cup of coffee and sound off with an owl or a crow, or a hawk. The next thing I know I’ve got the whole neighborhood cranked up. Try it, the next time you’re on your way out to work in the morning– let off a few locator calls and see what it does. Even in fairly urban neighborhoods you’ll see what I mean. You can get every bird in a half-mile radius in a tizzy.

I heard one batch of hens this morning way down in Hootin’ Holler. They weren’t feeling very vocal, and flopped down without much fanfare and disappeared. It’ll be warmer over night tonight. We’ll see if that gets them a bit more active.

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