It's modern day turkey hunting. I don't know if it's coyotes, global warming, bird flu, some unseen force of nature, or what the @#$#@, but turkeys just don't gobble anymore. Thus I legit QUIT turkey hunting altogether maybe 5 or 6 years ago, and had pretty much lost interest 5 or 6 years before that. I absolutely, positively, thoroughly REFUSE to deer-hunt turkeys. All the fun is in the gobbling--be it locating him, calling to him, him being vocal enough to stay on him, etc. Just sitting around blind calling isn't "fun". The basic act of shooting a turkey isn't "fun" (well, that's debatable, but you know what I mean ).

And I'm a guy who into his early 20's thought I'd work in the turkey hunting business, it was my whole life. I grew up working for/with Southland Game Calls and Camp Callers, I considered Doug Camp like a surrogate dad. Worked the booth at shows, travelled out of state, and hunted every morning of the season back in those days. And back then (late 80's thru the 90's) you'd hear a dozen turkeys every morning, most of which gobbled 300X up till lunch. Crap, we were just high school boys and we'd limit out within the first two weeks most seasons, sometimes the first week!!!(it was always Spring Break) But also most of my hunting is in the big wooded ridges, so I very much need the birds to gobble. I'm not on flat private land with fields, they aren't visible on the mountain. If they aren't gobbling, you're just out of the game. Of the 3 guys I know who killed over the weekend, every one them said they heard zero gobbles, they just went to a food plot where they'd had pics of birds and sat and waited. I talked to ONE person who ever heard a turkey gobble around these parts, and he said it only gobbled two times. Again, YAWN!!!!...I ain't deer-hunting turkeys. And it's got NOTHING to do with being "henned up", birds with hens still gobble their friggin' heads off. Silence isn't a result of having hens. Probably most of the birds I ever killed had hens, but they still gobbled at every call, crow, woodpecker, jet plane, thunder clap, and whatever other noise all morning, so you could stay with him and finally get close enough to kill 'eem.

I can't even tell you the last time I heard ONE turkey gobble more than maybe 20 times, and it's just become the norm to go and not hear a gobble at all. I'm out on that, got NO interest in it.