Owl Hoot On Public
I was out scouting public land in southern Wisconsin yesterday and parked in a location with no other vehicles. I passed on multiple pullouts with other vehicles (and what I assume are hunters) but wanted to respect others out there and not bust anyone’s birds. With that in mind when I left the parking lot I headed in the opposite direction of where I assumed the hunters were at. After hiking for about a half mile I did a couple yelps on my slate call (sorry I haven’t been getting ANY shock gobble action on the crow call). Shortly after someone just lets an owl hooter rip with the classic who cooks for you. They repeat it in pretty short succession a few times and then someone else starts replying to the original caller. They proceeded to call a few times back and forth. Granted it’s like 1 PM so I’m pretty sure it’s not actually owls.
Do you think this was just these hunters letting me know where they are and telling me to stay away? Does owl hooting have any meaning between hunters? Or do you think they were just trying to rip shock gobbles?