Got the calls out and dusted off. Opens here in Central FL. on 3/21/09

Oh your talkin about turkeys,hell I tought you were talkin about cock gobblers.

Flagobbler our birds are still in huge flocks. Lots of them to look at everyday in the fields by my house. Seen a real dandy on Saturday on the river bank. We start in middle April.
Good luck to ya!
I got cousins in Plant City that come up and deer hunt with me and they say they have some good turkey spots down their way. You all wear snake boots when you hunt. We just wear Deep Woods Off here.
Randy

Good luck in April Netman. I went to HighSchool in Plant City (home of the strawberry festival), that is Osceola country for sure. Birds are broke up already here and starting to gobbler during this warm spell we had last week. Little cold this morning, but its gettin closer everyday. Shoot'em in the face!!

Gotta shoot those damn turkeys to keep em off the morels.

They'll eat a bucket of mushrooms in a morning.

Smoked turkey breast with trout and morels is about as good as it gets.

Mud where I live is moral galore. RC hunted with me last spring and we hit a late mother load. We had crappie and morels for supper. Heeeeyaaaw
Flagobbler my cousins are Billy and Tim Lawson. If you know them cool if they owe you money they might be tough to wrassle it out of. Both are about 6'7" or better. Billy owns a alum fab shop in Plant City.
We hear the birds winter gobble in the mornings but they are half hearted gobbles.

Randy

Netman..do yall get the black and yellow morels (Merkles "miracles" in these parts) or just the blacks? A buddy of mine fertilizes his poplars and ash groves which is supposed to make them produce year after year. Lots of guys also go "sanging" for ginseng in the Spring. Too many fish biting for me.

We have the blacks,grays,preacher pricks and a couple more that I cannot think of right now. Morels grow around where I live like you would not believe. There are people that take vacation to pick them and sell them and they make some really good cash. You can drive down the road slowly and look out the window for them. We have old strip coal mines around and the really old mine spoils is where they are at. And I mean loads of them. Our turkey season is usually right at the end of morel hunting time. I always find a few late but a ton of dried morels while turkey hunting.
One year during turkey season I stopped off at a nearby woods to see if I could strike a goobler late in the morning. It was around 10am and after walking into the woods a hundred yards or so I found a big flat area and there was a good hundred yards by fifty yards of solid morels. I'm talking thousands. Most were dried up but a couple of grocery bags were not.
My uncle is a pro mushroom hunter and can tell you about what trees to look around and side of the hill and all that mushroom voodoo. I just go where I have found them before and get all I need.
Now 'sanging' we cannot legally do until Sept. We have a season but we do have a lot of sang around here too. If you think shroomers are hush hush the sangers are covert. I happen to be a sanger myself and will stop right here on that.
Sanging conflicts with our Sept goose season but I always find time for both. I squirrel hunt during August and when I spot the ginseng I write down the location in my handy notebook. Then during Sept I get out the notebook and russle some up.
Multi tasking at its finest. Throw in spring crappie season and I have my work cut out for me.
Here ya go...My day off in spring ...drive to turkey spot,listen for gobblers, set up on gobbler and either kill it or study him for tomorrow, look for mushrooms on the way out, while waiting for late morning gobblers get out crappie rod and cast, listen,watch full color blue wing teal buzz you, listen and watch mating pairs of canada geese, hear gobbler,put crappie in cooler, rod and tackle in truck, chase gobbler, kill it or study it,drive home looking for mushrooms,get home clean crappie,mushrooms and or turkey,go to river run hoop nets,come home clean catfish,package and freeze.

Randy

Sounds pretty damn good to me.
If yall had a Chesapeake Bay, I'd consider moving there.

I wish we had the Chesapeake. I have been there several times and even stayed at the island in the middle. Forgot the name. I have a Chesapeake Bay Ret and some decoys from the Delmarva area and have been to Chincoteague many times.
You got to take the good with the bad.
If I could be a waterman there and you could not grind the smile off my face.
Mud where do you live on the Ches?

Randy

Probably either Smith or Tangier Island. On Tangier, the local dialect is considered to be pretty close to how John Smith would've spoken at Jamestown. Neat, neat place.
I live about 2 hours west of the Bay. Several buddies keep their boats on the Eastern Shore of VA. I will probably try to buy some land or a house over there at some point. The shore is a special place. Miles of bean fields, oak woods, swamps, marsh, saltwater and fresh. The fishing is amazing. The different runs of fish throughout the Spring is awesome. Black drum, Red drum, rockfish, trout, specks, flounder, cobia, sharks, spadefish, amberjack, bluefish. The Bay is in serious trouble and has been for decades. They've lost almost all the SAV (submerged aquatic veg) which is where the baby crabs and oysters hide. They dredge for sooks in the winter which is being stopped. The rays and skates eat all the baby oysters before they get settled. They have overfished the menhaden (bunker) terribly and the predator species are suffering.
Also, the ducks have dropped off from the lack of SAV. Hydrilla in the brackish water has helped the divers, but when you think of the wild celery that used to feed millions and millions of Canvasbacks and now we have a closed season. I wish I had a time machine to go back and see the rafts of cans.

It was Tangier. Awesome place! Yeah I have old waterfowling books with stories of the Cans on the Bay. Love the old school hunting stories.
If I lived two hours from the Bay I would be there right now.
Randy