Froze before I could get my camera!
Wild Turkey Chronicles 2011 -Hunt #1
Sorry I haven’t written lately-my seminar and conssumer show schedule had me meeting myself coming and going. The 2010 winter turkey season introduced me to arctic turkey hunting conditions. It was in the low twenties or teens it seems like every day of the short 10 day season. Where is Al Gore when you need him? I had to bundle up so much I couldn’t get around as well as usual and I had trouble playing my friction calls but I still had some great hunts. to sum it all up, I bagged 3 birds, missed 3 and had 4 more come in and get away before I could get on them. Fall turkey hunting is not a slam dunk if you do it right.
Back to the 2011 spring season. I missed opening day in TN due to a speaking engagement in Madison WI at Glen Helgelands Deer and Turkey Expo where I did seminars and wworked in the “Tech Info Center” as the “Turkey Answer Man”. When I got home I had no plan or handle on where the birds were or where they wanted to go so I played it by ear aand built time for a couple days. Finally on the third morning I set up on a gobbling bird but I saw the hen fly down first and he was right behind her. I heard another turkey gobbling hard about a half mile away. I knew right where he was. Behind my absentee neighbors house with a bunch of hens. My neighbor doesn’t allow any hunting and I respect his wishes but my property is across the road from his. I have tried for 15 years to call a turkey across the road to the gun to no avail. All of the turkeys behind his house were born and raised on my property but when sprimg comes he shows up on weekends to mow his lawn and fill his birdfeeders with corn and sunflower seeds. Hard to call them away from that but he was the only turkey still gobbling so I set up on him in a fence row 40 yards from the road and about a quarter of a mile from his house. I called and the turkey gobbled-he gobbled every time I called. I figured he was standing under the sunflower seed feeder spitting out seed hulls every time he gobbled. We jawed back and forth to each other long enough to make me think this one would end up in another stale mate when I saw a hen pop up out of the ditch in front of his house and start down the gravel road toward me. This was an unusual but welcome sight. Five more hens followed in single file and the gobbler stepped out behind them. The turkeys would have to walk 250 yards down the gravel road before they would be in front of me in shotgun range. Five curious hens would have a chance to x-ray my location before the gobbler ever got close enough. It was 6:30 on a weekday and it was not unusual for cars and trucks to be up and down the road at this time of the morning. The hens were almost straight in front of me, cautious but moving slowly when the gobbler left the road. He had been dragging up the rear so he was still 100 yards away but he left the open grave road and wade through the tall wet grass heading straight for my position like he was on a string. I hadn’t called for 10 minutes. Everyting was coming my way and I didn’t want to invite any more scrutiny but the gobbler must have remembered where the calling was coming from and came to investigate the sassy hen that called him away from the bird feeder. I let the hammer down on him at 35 yards. He was a great bird, 4 beards and 1 1/2 inch spurs weighing in at 23#. I got the water hot, scalded and picked him and put him in the freezer to wait for Thanksgiving.
34"s total Boone and Crockett by a landslide!
Not far from the house