JB, congrats on getting the job done!! Reminds me of my ordeal last year stalking and crawling to get a tom on the 12th day of hard hunting.

Regarding a trend, I am waiting for more good information before seriously playing any blame game. I do know that the weather this past winter and early spring was significantly different from most previous years. The weather’s effect? It seems that some people almost always speculate about a poor poult production the previous year or two. In the areas that I hunted turkeys this year they did not spend much time in the picked corn fields. Last year they spent a lot of time in the picked soybean fields. This year they seemed to mostly stay in the woods all day long, like there was not much to eat in the picked fields, or they were "afraid" to get out in the open very much. Could this have been in part due to more animal disturbance just before turkey season (e.g., 4-legged predators, mushroom hunters, wood cutters, hikers, other trespassers)? Could turkeys be adapting to more 4-legged predators in the woods heavily infested with thicker understory (spice bush, bush honeysuckle, etc.) by keeping relatively “silent?” It will be interesting to see the actual harvest figures for this spring season, although I don't know how much that will tell us.