How much disturbance will turkeys take?

[bigbore442001]

When my dad and I were walking out Saturday with our bird, I noticed a fat juicy woodchuck on a stone wall. I was thinking to myself that it would be a ton of fun to Contenderize him with the 22 WRM.

My dad commented that you'll scare the turkeys away. I wonder how much he is right? Should I wait until after May 21st to hunt chucks in this area?

[iisabigone]

Bigbore I think shooting the groundhog after you are through turkey hunting for the day would be ok.

The property owner where I killed my first two toms this year has a crew  in select cutting 360 acres right now. I killed both of these toms on saturday mornings within 150 yards of where they had been loading logs all week for 2 months.

I also went with a couple fellows last week to a farm they had permission to hunt and they had been fooling with a couple  of gobblers for two weeks. These two fellows are new to spring turkey hunting and they had spooked the toms on numerous hunts.The toms where roosted in the same locations where they had been before at daylight and where gobbling pretty good from the roost. Talking to these fellows before the hunt I asked them where they had set up previously and what kinda calls they had used.  We made the setup on the first tom away from where they had previously called from and I used nothing but purrs and cuts on a slate. After the first bird hit the ground it took 5 minutes for him to get himself killed.  We hiked to another section of the property and set up(we took a long route around to avoud spooking the bird further). It took us about an hour and a half to find a good place. The other gobbler gobbled back to the first series of cuts but it took him about an hour before he worked his way over to us and get to flopping.

Here in the piedmont of Virginia the birds gobbled good last week