Turkeys and blinds
Turkey
Where I hunt the birds roost in the trees right next to a pond. They fly down over the pond and land on my friends side yard of grass and then walk up the lawn to the neighboring houses. The town has a new lawn which says a bowhunter must be 150 feet from a property line. This puts me smack dab on the grass where they fly down. If I put a Primos blind or perhaps a Ghost Blind down where they land do you think they will shy away from them and fly down in another direction?
Can you put it up early so they get used to seeing it without it killing your friend's grass?
Maybe set it up & leave it there for a day or two at a time before the season opens. It might condition them to it, or set it up before season & watch to see what their reaction is.
Turkeys are dumb as a box of rocks. I would agree about putting the blind out early but if you cannot I doubt it will matter. As long as they don't see or hear you setting up and do not catch movement in the blind I think you will be fine. Maybe I hunt where birds are not pressured but I have never had an issue killing birds. So much in fact that I do not hunt them much anymore, not a big thrill for me. Shawn
I don't think that law would be enforceable.
Put it up a couple of weeks in advance and observe what they do. I highly doubt they will react to it. If they do, it probably wont take them long to forget about it all together.
KJC- You may be right but everytime I call Trenton with this question they say that a town can pass any law they want to restrict hunting. I have a copy of a court case from 1954 which just about says that a municipality can not pass a Fish and Game law unless it is given authority to do so by the state. I plan on sending a copy to F&G and have them look at it and then see what they say.
They won't care especially since they are yard birds. They are used to it. They see change all the time.
Yes a township can pass any law on hunting. Most law enforcement recognizes those laws. Whether it's legal or not is another issue.
Since this your friends house I would follow the law since most friends don't want the cops showing up at their place.
Are they friends with their neighbors - maybe you could talk with them? That would solve your problem.
I agree with Sage, above. -Either way, if you are hunting that close to the property line it is probably best if you talk with the neighbor in advance so that they know what you're up to and in the event you hobble one you can get after him immediately.
I agree with setting the blind up before.... here is the catch. Get into the blind making NO NOISE or alerting the birds. Same as I set a blind up out in the woods a few days before, however the birds are roosted too close and fly the other way. They make notes of noises and movements in the night. Good luck as it sounds like a fun hunt.
You will have no issues. I've seen them fly down right to the blind many times. They just can't see them. At all!
I have set pop-up blinds up in fields that I knew turkeys were using, in the dark, and shot birds within a short time after fly down on multiple occasions. I also have had them shy away in the same circumstances.
Probably just like humans their own personality will play into it. Good luck!
Just two weeks ago I spent a week patterning a flock and set up my blind in the dark 1/2 mile from the roost. Got in quiet. When they came through the trees 200 yds away they would not come any closer. They were very wary. No one had hunted this property for turkeys in several years. I moved the blind into the brush and piled brush around it and they still wouldn't come close.
Turkeys are not always that dumb, at least in the fall.
I've had a tough time with turkeys in Nebraska shying away from blinds. In fact, I pretty much have given up using them because I've had such horrible results. I'm hunting relatively open country so a blind kind of sticks out like a sore thumb. Even after brushing blinds I've had a tough time.
With that said I have quite a few ranches and country to hunt. I've found that I do a lot better setting up decoys or just calling without decoys in "run and gun" fashion after locating a particular tom I'm interested in.
Ditto Habitat,...
As long as we don't get silhouetted within the blind, we're usually good even if we set it up minutes before we call in and kill a bird.
Spring, fall and winter, quite a few states and habitats.
I have a good friend who swears the easterns on his Kansas farm are more blind shy than his mature whitetails...and the guy knows what he's doing.
Tough to figure out a bird that has testes 10X bigger than his brains. :-)
Set up the blind the afternoon before you are going to hunt (and before the birds come into the area to roost.
Wear all black from the waist up the next AM
Set your jake decoy, a submissive hen and maybe a feeding hen 8-10 yards from your blind
Shoot accurately and you will kill your Turk
Good luck,
Mark
Archery season in Nebraska is super early in the spring. I think a lot of my problem with the blind/decoys setup is that toms tend to be flocked up with hens when I've hunted them early in the season. Toms could more or less care less about decoys that time of year because they have so many hens to tend to. I have a feeling later in the shotgun season when flocks start breaking up and hens start going off to nest the single or small groups of toms may be a bit easier to decoy..and decoy with blinds.
With that said, I've tried just about every setup with blinds/decoys (even the one Mark mentions above) with super poor results! They are blind shy birds...especially early in the season. Blinds that melt into the surroundings tend to work a little better because it is fairly open country and they won't have anything to do with blinds that stick out like a sore thumb!
"careless about decoys that time of year because they have so many hens to tend to"
Might depend on which decoys you're using.
We've been killing henned-up toms, by using fans or an assortment of jake/tom decoys, for 10 years or more.
Just get rid of the blind all together, unneeded.
