Headed out to our place for a few days to relax and disconnect a bit. Between chauffeuring the kids around with their BB guns and doing some feeder / stand work I made a little time to chase turkeys. Our place is by no means covered in turkeys, but we do have a few scattered throughout and it makes for fairly challenging hunting.
Saturday morning I heard a few gobbles but there were a couple of issues 1) they all came from about 1/2 mile into a neighbor’s property and 2) I didn’t hear a gobble after 7:35am, so even if they were making their way onto our place they were going to be fairly silent. I drove around quite a bit throughout the day and only saw a single hen. She was near a water hole formed by recent rains and looking around in the mud, I could see at least two distinct different size tracks. I headed out for an evening hunt and was going to check for axis first, that was a bust so about 6:30 I headed to where I saw the hen earlier that day. When I got to the spot I noticed there were already tracks over my tire tracks from just a short bit before. Not wanting to push a bird, if it was still in the area, I just went back to camp and hung out with the kids and wife.
Sunday morning I decided I’d hunt near the little water hole, hoping if the birds were in the area they’d come in to the water at some point that morning. Walking to the spot that morning I busted a single birds off it’s roost, which was about 15 yards from the little water hole, I was pretty bummed thinking I’d just blew my chance. I went ahead, set up, and began the waiting game. As I was sitting there it was absolutely silent as far as turkey are concerned. No gobbles, not even in the distance. Around 7:40 I called and had a gobbler respond, things started looking up, but he was probably 6-700 yds away. I waited a few minutes and call again, he immediately responded and I could tell he had closed some distance...starting to get a little more excited. We called back and forth and with every passing minute he seemed to get closer. After about 20-25 minutes of calling back and forth and him starting to get pretty close, he got eerily quiet. I quit calling, hoping he was still coming in. After about 5 minutes of silence He catches me eye, he is coming out of the woods into the road in a full strut. Man, what a beautiful site!!! With his beard and wing tips basically dragging the ground he waddled his way towards the decoys, spitting and drumming. I sat there, not wanting to really shoot because I was enjoying the show, but knowing I needed to before Murphy’s Law kicked in. I lowered the bead to the middle on his neck and the 20 gauge did it’s trick. He did a back flip and was down for the count. What a fun hunt, one I won’t forget anytime soon.
Saturday morning I heard a few gobbles but there were a couple of issues 1) they all came from about 1/2 mile into a neighbor’s property and 2) I didn’t hear a gobble after 7:35am, so even if they were making their way onto our place they were going to be fairly silent. I drove around quite a bit throughout the day and only saw a single hen. She was near a water hole formed by recent rains and looking around in the mud, I could see at least two distinct different size tracks. I headed out for an evening hunt and was going to check for axis first, that was a bust so about 6:30 I headed to where I saw the hen earlier that day. When I got to the spot I noticed there were already tracks over my tire tracks from just a short bit before. Not wanting to push a bird, if it was still in the area, I just went back to camp and hung out with the kids and wife.
Sunday morning I decided I’d hunt near the little water hole, hoping if the birds were in the area they’d come in to the water at some point that morning. Walking to the spot that morning I busted a single birds off it’s roost, which was about 15 yards from the little water hole, I was pretty bummed thinking I’d just blew my chance. I went ahead, set up, and began the waiting game. As I was sitting there it was absolutely silent as far as turkey are concerned. No gobbles, not even in the distance. Around 7:40 I called and had a gobbler respond, things started looking up, but he was probably 6-700 yds away. I waited a few minutes and call again, he immediately responded and I could tell he had closed some distance...starting to get a little more excited. We called back and forth and with every passing minute he seemed to get closer. After about 20-25 minutes of calling back and forth and him starting to get pretty close, he got eerily quiet. I quit calling, hoping he was still coming in. After about 5 minutes of silence He catches me eye, he is coming out of the woods into the road in a full strut. Man, what a beautiful site!!! With his beard and wing tips basically dragging the ground he waddled his way towards the decoys, spitting and drumming. I sat there, not wanting to really shoot because I was enjoying the show, but knowing I needed to before Murphy’s Law kicked in. I lowered the bead to the middle on his neck and the 20 gauge did it’s trick. He did a back flip and was down for the count. What a fun hunt, one I won’t forget anytime soon.
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