I've not seen a flock like that in NW Oklahoma in about 20y.
The large flocks come around in the evening once in a while too, but usually in bunches of 25 or 30. Our favorite everyday visitors are five big long-bearded toms that hang out together near the house and always roost in the creek bottom behind us. They know us and our vehicles well, and will readily approach within 6-10 feet, but unfamiliar people or vehicles make them instantly disappear. For some reason they really hate delivery trucks, and get very aggressive with them. Drivers have called me a few times to be rescued because they were surrounded and couldn't get out of their truck to deliver a package. A couple of times a driver has just thrown the package out the window and backed out and left. These five also seem to have seen too many Soprano episodes, because they seem to expect a few handfuls of hen scratch every morning as protection payment. If we are late with it they will gang up near the front door and hurl what sound suspiciously like turkey curses until we pay up. Other than trails of poop on the patio when they peek in the windows (they are very nosy) and an occasional bloody fight amongst themselves during the rut, they have been kind of fun to have around.
I bought my place 4 years ago and in all that time have only caught a single turkey on camera, until this morning. I am hoping between my raccoon eradication and food source management, they stick around, or at least return with more frequency. Now I am leaning more toward getting a summer food plot in.
Rolling out a round bale of hay with grain in it, is a quick way for a food source.
Just don't hunt closer than 100 yards to it.
I had a barrel of old wheat that I needed to get rid of so back in January, I dumped it on top of the remaining corn and protein in that feeder. I figure that is what they have discovered. I should have about another 2-3 weeks of feed remaining in there before I fill it with protein pellets.
To clarify, per the regulations:
Baiting
Turkeys may not be hunted or taken within 100 yards of any bait. Baiting is the placing, exposing, depositing, distributing, or scattering of shelled, shucked, or unshucked corn, wheat, or other grain or other feed so as to constitute for such birds a lure, attraction, or enticement, on or over any area where hunters are attempting to take them. The taking of turkey over standing crops, grain crops, properly shucked on the field where grown or grain found scattered solely as the result of normal agricultural operations is permitted. See Department-Managed Area Rules for rules about baiting on Department-managed lands.
That pattern is incredible.
That is an awesome cat there!
