Me with My Spring Gobbler In The Woods Where He Was Harvested
For me, the only bad part about spring turkey hunting is the early alarms. Once I’m up, my favorite time to be in the woods is at first light, but to say I’m a morning person is a far stretch. The 3:50 am alarm that morning was absolutely brutal, but after a cup of coffee, I was ready to make the trip to the Clarion area. Jason was already at our meeting place as I arrived, and we quickly made the roughly one mile trip to an area we knew some birds were roosting. We were hunting a strip mine top, surrounded by pine trees, a steep ridge and hardwoods bottom. First light was quickly approaching, and we planned to wait until we heard gobbles on the roost before we would set up. Unfortunately, daylight came and we hadn’t heard a gobble, so I decided to make a few soft tree calls followed by a fly down cackle. Again we heard nothing close, but we did hear a fairly distant gobble down on the bottom in the hardwoods. We also heard distant gobbles several hundred yards back from an area we walked through to get to this spot.
It was apparent there was nothing going on up top, so we decided to circle the ridge and hunt the hardwood bottom. We were walking the long ridge on the bottom in the hardwoods, stopping every 75 to 100 yards to call, but never heard another gobble from that entire area. I enjoy hunting this way after the morning flurry (which never came this morning) because of the opportunity to see wildlife, new woods, and the possibility of rounding that next bend and hearing a hot gobbler. It also gave us a chance to catch up on each others lives, as I haven’t seen Jason in quite a while.
Heading Home For Some More Photos
The time was getting to be around 8:30 and we only heard distant gobbles, so we decided to make a change. We headed back to our vehicles and went to an area about 5 miles down the road. Our game plan was to walk one of the many logging roads in that area calling along the way, in hopes of finding that one hot gobbler. We stopped about 100 yards from where we parked and listened to crows going crazy in the woods just ahead of us. I figured if there were birds in the area, they might shock gobble at this, but we heard nothing. I called several times and we listened for about 10 minutes and once again… nothing. We made a few more steps down the road, rounded a bend and a gobbler exploded into the pines at the sight of us (I could see his beard). I couldn’t say for sure, but I figured he was coming in silent and we destroyed our only chance to put a tag on a bird for the day. We continued on stopping and calling for several hundred yards on the logging road without an answer. Again we flushed a big bird except this time it was from a tree about 30 yards to our right. This may or may not have been a turkey, but Jason said he had a good look at it and felt it was. I’ve never seen a turkey roosted in a tree, mid morning on a bright and sunny day but I don’t doubt what he saw. I remember saying if that was a turkey on the roost at mid morning, I can’t imagine it being a good sign for us.
Jason and I With My Spring Gobbler
At this point, even though it was still mid-morning, my confidence was fading. We continued walking to the top of a large hill with a strip mine in front of us, and Jason stopped dead in his tracks. He said he heard a gobble and it was close. I let out a few yelps and Jason looked at me and said he heard it again. He gobbled on top of my yelps so I still didn’t hear it but Jason said “it’s right there”! Even though I didn’t hear the gobbles, I could tell by the way Jason was acting we needed to find the base of a tree and fast. I told Jason to face the bird and set up so he could see and shoot in the only open area between us and the bird. We quickly readied ourselves and I told Jason I wasn’t going to call for a few minutes. I waited and after a couple of minutes, I asked Jason if he wanted me to call. He said “Yes I want you to hear it”, so I gave a soft yelp. Halfway through, he boomed a gobble and it was close. I said get ready, he’s coming, and should show up any second. Just then I heard Jason say “there he is: I see him”. I couldn’t see the bird as my back was to them but I told Jason to shoot whenever he’s ready. I heard Jason’s safety go off, and prepared myself for the loud boom that was about to happen. Then I heard Jason say he couldn’t get on him and that the bird was all mine. I still couldn’t see the bird and I told Jason to do what he needed to do to get a shot. Jason’s reply was “I can’t but you should be seeing him any second”. Just as he finished saying that, I saw the bright white head clear a couple of trees to my far left. His head was up and he was searching hard for the invisible hen. I glanced at the beard, lined my sights up and verified: “Are you sure you can’t shoot”? Jason’s reply was “yes take him”, so I touched off my shot. The next thing I see is the flash of his fan and the thrashing that turkeys do after being fatally hit with a shotgun load.
We both jumped up and quickly made our way to the gobbler. By the time the gobbler was done thrashing, it found its way to the base of a Multiflora Rose bush (the kind with the very large hooked thorns). I remember Jason saying congratulations on your bird, now have fun going in there to get him out. After retrieval from the bush, we tagged the bird, took several pictures and rehashed the events of the hunt. Jason said the bird came out in the opening but never stopped in an open place for him to shoot. As the bird worked down, the angle he took prevented Jason the ability to swing and get on him.
7/8 inch Spurs
9 3/4" Beard
We decided we would end our morning by working our way back to the truck, stopping to call every 100 yards. This proved uneventful and ended our day hunting. As with many other types of hunting, it’s amazing how in the turkey woods, all it takes is a few minutes to turn a slow day into another great memory.
Good luck and be safe.
Mike
No comments:
Post a Comment