Good friend Mike Jordan (ATSKO) and I were heading for CDheyenne OK  on Thursday but we made a stop to visit my good friends Jerry and Dawn Anita Plumlee in Velma on the way.  I have known them  since I was in the music business years ago when Dawn Anita was a recording artist and I was a struggling songwriter. We keep in touch.  They have a horse and cow operation out of  Velma and have complained to me several times about turkeys vandalizing their yard.  I promised many times to show up and try to alleviate part of their problem and this time I was going to do it.  We got in about 4 p.m. and Dawn Anita took us around to likely spots to check for sign.  The last place we looked, about a quarter mille from her house, we found a lot of tracks and as we stood there looking down a turkey obliged us by gobbling 4 times.  It was getting close to fly up time so we knew about where he would be in the morning.  Dawn Anita and I picked and sang some old songs that night but Mike and I were up early and in position well before daylight.  I had my Dave Smith decoys out and as grey light began to sneak in the wind picked up to about 30 mph.  I called several times before he finally started gobbling but he fleww down, walked up and down the road in front of us for a while before coming over to grin down the decoys-his last mistake. Mike lowered the boom on him.  We butchered him, left Dawn Anita the meat for her families Easter dinner and hit the road.

Croton Creek Adventures 

We were headed for Croton Creek Guest Ranch and Outfitter  out of Cheyenne , OK  to get ready for a Media hunt that would begin on the 15th. The wind had picked up considerably since that morning from the 30 mph we endured during the hunt.   I was raised in Florida so I’ve been through several hurricanes.  I told Mike the hurricanes  weren’t any worse than what we were driving in.  We came by one semi  blown over in the road and another blew over right in front of us so we were glad to get off of the interstate.   We met up with our hosts Scott Sanderford and his lovely and talented wife  Joni  at what they call the “Social Barn” which is actually a large banquet hall complete with very tasteful western decorations , a stage , an excellent PA system and seating for a large crowd of people.  Scott and Joni were both warm and friendly folks and we hit it off right away.  Scott  and Joni took us out scouting the next morning to show us where the 12 outdoor writers and Sporting Goods manufacturers would be hunting.  Scott had done his homework.  He had the turkeys located and patterned and was on a first name basis wwith most of them which means a lot of time spent in the woods before we got there.   We got all of the writers in on Monday and I get to try out their PA system during my openoing night welcoming concert.

A real treat to get to use a good PA system on a turkey hunt

Under Armour was our clothing sponsor along with Real Tree and they supplied us with clothes that were well designed and so comfortable you hated to take them off at the end of the day.  Knight and Hale was another sponsor and they supplied the turkey calls.   Those Oklahoma turkeys believed the “White Liar”" calls every time.  Remington brought their versatile and amazingly durable Versa Max shotguns for us to use and they performed flawlessly.  I learned something new on this hunt.  How to shoot a shotgun with optics.  Trijicon, one of the hunt sponsors, mounted their RMR (Rugged Miniturized Reflex) sights on the Versa  Max shotguns.   Eddie Stevenson was there representing Trijicon and he explained the complicated sighting method using the RMR.  Put the red dot on whatever you want to shoot and pull the trigger. Amazing! And easy, even for us old dogs.  No worries about lining  up the beads or whether your head is down on the stock, just put the red dot on what you want to shoot and fire.  I don’t beleive a single bird was missed on the whole hunt and some were present who were prone to miss (I won’t name any names-they know who they are).   I”d say  16 gobblers  taken by 12 hunters in 3 days says it all.

Left to Right   Scott and Joni Sanderford, Gary Sefton, Dodd Clifton-Kneeling-Eddie Stevenson, Jay Cassell, Jeff Johnston, Steve Hickoff, Mike JordanJ,im Casada, Mike Mattly-standing Mark Estrada, Mike Lambeth and Brian Lasley

Versa Max and Trijicon put him on the ground!

Western Oklahoma is big, wild country with plenty of wildlife to go along with some spectacular scenery.  Croton Creek Ranch is a  great destination for deer and turkey hunters as well as those who want to visit  the Black Kettle National Grasslands and tour the historic sites and museums arounde Cheyenne.  Scott and Joni will make you feel right at home. 

Call Joni  @ 580 497-6129

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

Fall Turkey the Hard Way!

Turkey number seven was an unexpected bonus. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency adds an either sex turkey tag to the Archery Only deer season which allows a bow hunter to take one turkey during the archery hunt. They offer this concession with tongue slightly in cheek since the annual harvest of turkeys during archery season seldom exceeds 300 birds and 99% of them are incidental to deer hunters.
As an avid deer hunter, October usually finds me hanging up in trees with my bow in hand in hopes of putting venison in my freezer and horns on the wall. I was aware of the fall archery tag but I’ve never been able to get my bow drawn on a turkey from a tree stand and years back I’d had some frustrating experiences bow hunting turkeys in the fall. Back in the mid 80’s when the only fall turkey hunting opportunities were brief and limited to archery tackle, I did it all by the book and I can tell you, it is hard to scatter turkeys when you don’t have a shotgun and it is harder still to get your bow drawn on a turkey that is responding to your calls if you don’t have a blind. In three years of fall turkey hunting with my compound bow, I got one shot at a called up turkey. When I finally got a young hen within range and got my bow drawn, I was so wired up and anxious, my hastily hurled arrow hit 2 feet low at 20 yards. Needless to say, when Tennessee finally opened a fall turkey season that allowed the use of shotguns, I lost interest in bow hunting fall turkeys.
Until this year, that is. While walking back from deer hunting, I disturbed a flock of turkeys feeding under a large red oak tree on two consecutive mornings. I had experimented with portable blinds and decoys the previous fall with some success so I was equipped and the season was open so I decided to go turkey hunting.
I drug my Boiler Room ground blind out of my storage room and rounded up the “ “Lip Sisters” (My two super realistic Dave Smith decoys “Hot Lips” and “Sweet Lips”) , I was ready. I got the “Boiler Room” set up close to the red oak at high noon to avoid spooking the turkeys again and stored the Lip Sisters and my Hunt Comfort chair in it. The next morning before first light I set the decoys 10 yards in front of the blind, got my turkey calls and bow placed in easy reach and waited to hear the first yelp.
And waited, and waited and waited. Not a peep. I had been making some lost yelps and kee kee runs, trying to get a sympathetic response since fly down time but nothing would answer. I was beginning to believe the turkeys were feeding in a different area and thinking seriously about dragging up when I thought I heard a turkey purr from the closed up side of the blind. I made a soft yelp and picked up my bow. My soft yelp was answered by another purr and a soft cluck. I hooked up my release and waited. 8 hens came scratching and pecking into view about 10 yards from the blind. They acknowledged the Lip Sisters with clucks and purrs and went about their business feeding on the plentiful acorns. In an attempt to blend in with the dark inside of the blind, I was wearing my only available “Ninja” outfit (a pair of black work out pants and a black fleece Yamaha shirt) but the turkeys still got nervous and started drifting away when I drew my bow. I held at full draw until they settled down. When one of the hens turned sideways and stopped 10 yards out, I settled the pin on her wing butt and squeezed the release. The Rage broad head performed as advertised and my first bow killed fall turkey was in the bag. Fifteen years ago I could call the turkeys in but they were nervous when they got close and I could never get my bow drawn without getting caught. The blind and the decoys did the trick. The decoys relaxed the turkeys enough so they didn’t pay any attention to the blind which concealed my movement enough to get my bow drawn. Next archery season I will hunt deer and I will hunt turkeys on purpose.
Fall firearm turkey season starts Dec. 6 for 11 days-I’ll keep you posted.

last of the 5 subspecies!

Old adobe home site

After 15 years of negotiation, it still took 2 years to get this one off the ground. I had been meeting and talking with Manuel Enrichez about hunting Gould’s turkeys from his lodge in old Mexico for 15 years at every National Wild Turkey Federation convention that came around. We finally put it all together. I was going to take a group of outdoor writers to Manuel’s el Halcon lodge to hunt Gould’s turkeys in the Sierra Madres. I had the writers and manufacturers all lined up and rarin’ to go. Then the “Swine Flu Panic” struck. There were more cases of the flu in South Carolina than in Mexico but the media fanned the pandemic flames to a fever pitch with dire warnings to anyone who planned to travel in Mexico. Clear-thinking adults were stampeded into canceling all travel plans and unfortunately, this group included two of the outdoor writers. Since it would be unfair to the manufacturers to proceed with less than a full accompaniment of writers, the 2009 trip was postponed, much to my chagrin. I met with Manuel again at the next NWTF convention and the hunt was on again in spite of the drug wars raging in the border towns (we were flying in to Chihuahua City, 250 south of the border). The drug war scare had some effect and the writers group, once again, was reduced by 2 . The drug war panic took its’ toll but it also added to the sense of high adventure and intrigue; come hell or high water, myself, Dave Dolbee with Petersen’s Hunting, Burt Carey with the NWTF and Peter Mathiesen with Outdoor Life, were not to be denied our chance to complete our “Royal Slams”. Mike Jordan w/ ATSKO, Mike Mattly w/ Knight & Hale, Dodd Clifton w/ RealTree and Linda Powell (had to cancel @ last minute) w/Remington were the sponsoring manufacturers who braved the trip.
We all met up at DFW and boarded the flight to Chihuahua City. We were met as soon as we landed by Manuel’s guides who got our Remington shotguns and all of our gear through customs without a hitch. We loaded up in Suburbans and Pick-ups and headed for the mountains. A three hour drive south west of the city put us at the front door of the spacious and gracious el Halcon Lodge that was more like a grand hotel than a hunting camp. The lodge hospitality was five star and the hunts were adventures. We left the lodge each morning @ 3:30 a.m. for a 2 ½ hour drive to the high Sierras and returned at 9 p.m. The hunts were long and hard, but worthwhile and rewarding. The guides were hard working and conscientious and we were able to communicate through signs and gestures and pantomimes, all of which were amusing and entertaining. We found my turkey on the third morning at the end of a high ridge. We called, he came, a shot was fired, we took some pictures and my quest was ended. The hunt was almost secondary to the breath-taking scenery and the fellowship we enjoyed on those long days. The turkeys were plentiful, the guides knew how to find them and by the end of the week, everyone got their Goulds; although Mike Jordan broke the bead off the end of his shotgun and missed two before he finally connected. Mike Mattly also missed a couple and Dodd Clifton “gut-shot” his turkey “to make sure he wouldn’t miss”.
I’m not sure how safe it is down there these days with the “drug wars” spreading out but we didn’t encounter any kind of hostility on our hunt and we sure made some indelible memories. If you want to hunt turkeys in old Mexico you can’t go wrong hunting with Manuel and you can tell him I said so. E-mail him at mxhunter@hotmail.net .

2010 Turkey Chronicles hunt #5

Sorry I haven’t finished up the chronicles sooner.  I had to take an intermission while I hosted an outdoor writers’  whitetail  bow hunt in Vermont, Illinois. The writers, myself, Dave Dolbee, Patrick Meitin, Bob Humphrey, and Jake Edson hunted with Bruce Ulrich  out of  the TimberTall Outfitters  lodge in Vermont, IL, right in the heart of BIG! Whitetail country. Unfortunately, mother nature was not cooperating.  Hot days and warm nights kept the deer from moving much during shooting hours so no one took an Illinois rack home but a great time was had by all.  We were entertained and informed about new products  by our hunting industry hosts including Travis Hollins  with  Yamaha who  expounded and expanded on the technology featured on the new Grizzly 450 which included  electric power steering !  Mike Mattly with PRADCO Outdoor Brands demonstrated Summits’ new Switchblade  climbing stand that folds flat for easy transporting,  www.summitstands.com , Knight & Hales latest calls www.knightandhale.com ,as well as  Moultrie’s new top of the line Trail Cameras and feeders www.mpolltriefeeders.com .  We also got samples of Code Blues’ latest entries; the super whitetail attractor and appetite stimulator “Urge” and their “Grave Digger” mock scrape formula that looks like dirt and just keeps on working for 30 days.  Deer responded to the Code Blue products when we put them out but they did so mostly at night www.codebluescents.com    Eddie Stevenson was there representing Trijicon’s entry into the archery market.  They are keeping their unique item under wraps until the ATA show in January but I can say it is an improvement over anything   I’ve used and that Trijicon is known for their “Brilliant Aiming Solutions™” www.trijicon.com .  Deer vision and scent guru Mike Jordan  talked  about ATSKO’s  new “Blaze Orange Camo” that looks orange to the human eye but  appears as outline breaking camo to the deers’ eye.  Mike also updated  information on UV Killer and Sport Wash and introduced some new ATSKO products that will make life easier for sportsmen www.Mike@ATSKO.com . 

     Now, about that turkey.   It was already May with just a few days left in the TN turkey season.  I had been hunting every morning all over the county  but the three gobblers that were left out of the original nine that hung out a mile west of my house  seemed to be my best bet.  They had been repeatedly harassed by  Alabama trespassers who hunted a property close by so they were world class skeptics but they were close to home and I had exclusive hunting rights on the property.   The “three amigos” as I called them, were now two amigos and a Casanova who had taken up with a small group of hens.  I didn’t care which one went home with me but  when  two gobblers start hanging out together, they tend to show out for each other and don’t respond as well to calling..   I knew where the “on-button” was for the Casanova bird and I planned to exploit it if possible.  My neighbor said he had been seeing old Cass strutting in the field by his house for the past three mornings.  The hens were roosting across the road in plain sight of the field on an oak bluff and I was sure he was roosting close by as were his two old partners.  I first  tried going around behind them,  trying to call them back away from the road and the field  but that didn’t work.  The hens were going across the road to the field and Casanova was going with them.  My plan was to set up at the back of the field with a couple of good-looking decoys and call the hens to me.  The gobbler would follow and then take a ride in my truck.  I went to the back of the field at high noon with my Dave Smith decoys in hand and constructed a pretty good blind.  I left the decoys in the blind so I wouldn’t have to pack them in the next morning and went home brimming with the false sense of confidence and peace of mind I get when I have a plan.

            I had my decoys placed and was in the blind way before first light.  As dawn started breaking I sent out an owl hoot that was answered by three different gobblers, roosted on the  bluff, right where I thought they would be.   Looking good! I did some calling  and all three gobblers responded with eager enthusiasm.  I was just about to call some more when I saw a turkey sail down and land in the field about 150 yards out.  Another turkey landed close by the first and even at that distance I could tell by their size and stature they were gobblers.  I yelped at them and they both gobbled and  half strutted towards me.  A third bird landed close to the first two and immediately went into a full strut.   Old Cass, no doubt.  Usually two gobblers will team up on a single and whip him good but not this time.  Old Cass didn’t even have to land a punch.  The two amigos started to bow up at him, then thought better of it and turned tail and ran.  The wrong way!  Not one of the gobblers ever laid an eye on my sexy decoys.  The two amigos were running for their life,  200 yards to the left of my blind and old Cass was right behind them with blood in his eye.  All three of them disappeared into the woods way out of shotgun range and no amount of calling would get a reply from any one of them.  I stayed put in my blind for another hour but nothing  answered my calls so I decided to fall in behind them.  I eased along through the woods in the direction they were headed when I saw them last, stopping occasionally to send out a few urgent yelps in hopes they might give away their location.  I was approaching an open pasture when I saw what appeared to be  part of a tail fan sticking up above a pond dam.  I crouched down and put the binoculars on it and sure enough, it was attached to a turkey.  It was old Cass, following his hens and strutting his stuff.  No sign of the other gobblers but the hens were plainly feeding back toward the field where my decoys were languishing from lack of attention. My best bet was to get back in the blind and wait for them to get there.  After an hour of waiting,  I heard  wing flapping and aggressive purrs coming from back in the timber,  closing ground,  I thought maybe the two “amigos” had found some courage somewhere and confronted old Cass but when they came into view, just out of shotgun range, it turned out to be three jakes playing hard nosed tag team on old  Cass. They were chasing around in circles, then getting in a few licks, then chasing again and the circles were coming my way.  Old Cass would have been better off to have stood his ground against those jakes.  When they fussed and fought to within  35 yards of my blind I sent a load of Remington Wingmaster HD’s to fetch him home.  Old Cass turned out to be an ordinary two year old gobbler with ¾  inch spurs and a nine inch beard plus attitude and libido but he was a true trophy to me.  My profession usually had me in other  states during most of the Tennessee turkey season so I had never before taken my four bird limit.  Old Cass was number four and a celebration was in order.  My Tennessee season was over but I was heading for a real adventure in Mexico in two weeks, hunt # 6 in the 2010 Turkey Chronicles-Stay Tuned!                    

Casanova's last ride

Echoes of Spring Chronicles -Continued

Tennessee Hunt # 4

These chronicles are kind of like fishing and hunting shows.  I don’t dwell on the days when nothing is biting or happening or when things didn’t work out for  whatever reason. Unless there is a good lesson to be learned, the only reports will be on successful hunts.  With that said, you now know  this is not the fourth time I went turkey hunting.  The first bird was on April 3 (opening day), the second was April 4 (Easter Sunday).  I hunt somewhere every day but  I didn’t score again until April 13^th just before tax day.  I did take 3 days off to go over to the Goodman Ranch in west Tennessee to try to help some of Mike Goodman’s clients bag a bird.  Mike has a beautiful place just outside of Jackson, TN  with plenty of turkeys in residence but none of my hunters connected while I was there.  Between bad luck and not knowing the area I couldn’t make it happen but we had a big time.  Back on my home ground, on the morning of the 13^th  I took a chance and went back to the field where I’d seen the 9 gobblers on opening day.  I knew two of them were in my freezer and the rest had probably scattered out with different groups of hens but it was a place to start.  I heard a turkey gobble way in the back of the hollow, across the fence on Mr. Gilmore’s place where I couldn’t hunt and another turkey across the road and three fences in the other direction, on a farm that  I could hunt.  I had nearly a mile to go to get to him, not to mention negotiating the fences, but he was the only game in town so I went after him.  I made it through two fences and decided to set up on the third fence, about 100 yards from where he was gobbling his head off in a fence row that ran perpendicular to the fence I was set up on.  I called to him hoping he would fly down on my side of the fence row,  then walk the fence to the corner.  I knew he wouldn’t try to cross the fence in the corner  and a right turn he would put him 20 yards from where I sat.  I had heard a turkey gobble way up on the hill beyond  and to the right of the turkey I was set up on but I was too busy trying to call this one down to pay any attention to him.  I heard hen yelping coming from the fence row so I started pouring on the calling.  I knew this gobbler would follow the hens where ever they went so I started browbeating the hens, trying to call them to me.  I called, he gobbled, the hens yelped and I called back.  These exchanges had been going on for five minutes when I noticed a tiny black speck in the pasture way up on the hill where a gobble had come from earlier that morning.  I called to the hens in the fence row, they yelped back and I got my mind back on the business at hand. A little later, when I looked back out in the pasture, the speck was closer and shaped more like a turkey but still too far away for positive identification.  It was moving down the hill at a steady pace, still a good 300 yards out.  I was still preoccupied, desperately trying to talk the closer birds into seeing things my way.  I caught sight of the turkey in the pasture again about 200 yards out and determined that it was a hen and she was coming my way.  She dropped into a swale and went out of sight and I went back to calling to the birds in the trees.  The hens in the trees flew out on the wrong side of the fence row and the gobbler went with them. Shucks!  I knew it was futile but I was calling to them anyhow-trying to get them to fly back over the fence when the hen came into view about 60 yards out coming up the fence toward me. When I started to look away I did a double take.  What I had been thinking was a hen turned out to be a gobbler and he was coming toward me in a hurry. I was sitting there with my gun in my lap, of course,  and the gobbler was staring a hole in me and getting closer every second.  If I moved he was certainly going to catch me.  If I didn’t move I couldn’t shoot him.  When he got within 15 yards I picked my gun up and put it to my shoulder.  He should have blown out of there but he  threw his head up and putted and that was a big mistake.  By the time I got over the fence he was soaked from flopping in the wet grass but he felt good in my vest game bag on the way to the truck.  Why he never gobbled or strutted in that 500 yard trek across the pasture I’ll never know.  I had one more tag to fill and the last Tennessee bird would be a tough one to get down but that is another story. Be talking to you soon. G