My son is coming to ranch tomorrow and try his luck. I was working on different things today and could heard goggling all over the place. I had lunch and called with box call a few times and they don't seem to respond much to calls. Weather has been very interesting with a change everyday. Pretty tight lipped.

Nice. Any toms ever show up? Odd thing too is Jake fans and beards but look big bodied and big head.

Very nice.

I see maybe 5 mature toms and I see one or two once in a while. I just don't see many hens now at all. I rancher down the road stopped the other day and said the same thing hardly see any hens.

I agree they are large body birds for jakes.

Beautiful pictures

You definitely have next year crop for sure!

First pick is my son and me. Second pic is an hour later. Sorry about my son wearing crocs. He forgot his boots and I wasn’t turning around this morning to go back.

I hope you do well. That long beard is a great bird.

It seems early in the dispersal now then in past years that’s a common occurrence the last several years. SD and WY moved their seasons back a couple weeks to deal with the shift in breeding patterns. I’m not sure what an impact it would have on them overall it shorted the season when the birds show little interest in calling.

The last trip to the Black Hills the hens stayed with the gobblers until the seasons end in May. The GFP got all excited and shorted the season and dropped the May extra tags thinking the bird numbers were down but when a storm rolled in the birds were out feeding in large numbers.

Last week in WI the Tom I got was just getting hot by the lack of drag rub on the wing tips. The week before that the birds stuck together here in SD and did not break cover no attempts at a dispersal yet. It’s getting to the point May is more of a prime time hunt period than April is now.

Merriams they ate something