Last spring turkey season my dad and I went out to our favorite hunting spot and set up a tent in the snow. It was kind of unusual for it to snow so late in the season. The next day when we got up the snow was still on the ground. I was excited because we would be able to see fresh turkey tracks in the snow. It was one day before the season opened. We had learned that for no apparent reason a big flock of turkeys could move out of an area that previously had a lot of activity, so we usually go out a day before season opens to be sure the birds are still where we think they are. We drove some of the roads above our camp after breakfast. We saw a bunch of hens about 200 yards off on the ridge we were on so we felt good about the area we were in. Later we fooled around in our camp, since we already had decided where we would set up in the morning. The next morning we hiked up the road in the dark and sat up on the ridge where we had seen the hens. We saw that they had come from the north, so we set up in that direction. It was cold in the morning. When the sun rose it was really quiet in the woods, which is unusual in the ponderosa woods in the morning. Usually there are woodpeckers, crows, and other animals chirping and squawking when the sun comes up. After the sun came up the wind picked up and it was hard to hear anything. All in all after seeing all those birds the day before, it was a very discouraging morning and the wind for me makes it very hard to hunt turkeys. I get discouraged pretty easily during my turkey hunts. While I love being out in the woods with my dad and enjoying the great outdoors, by the end of a fruitless day I can get pretty grumpy. I was stewing pretty good by the afternoon. We stopped by a watering hole to scout it on our way out to town and met a guy who had killed a turkey in the area. On our last day of the hunt the year before, we set up by the watering hole and the forest exploded with turkeys that flew out of their roosts. We could hear two different gobblers going off again and again. I had planned all year to sit in that same spot, but decided against it when we had seen those hens up on the ridge. On our way into town I was in worse shape mentally than I've ever been since we started turkey hunting. Just ready to call it quits. In an effort to save my sanity, I decided I would do three things. 1. I would be a lot more deliberate in decisions I made about my hunt. 2. I would call a lot. 3. For the second time ever I would go alone to my morning hunt. I think these decisions uped my odds the second I made them. I'll discuss each one in detail in other posts. That evening, I walked a logging road for about two miles squawking my box often while I walked. I didn't hear or see any birds, but I at least felt like I was doing something productive. As it turns out right after I got back to camp, we heard another hunters box call just 200 yards away by the fork in the road. I went over to say hello, but then realized that it was a real turkey hen that had high tailed it up the hill. I think it had heard my calls and was calling me to the flock up the hill. I had talked over the morning hunt with my dad and we had agreed to hunt different areas in the morning. With the encounter that night as well as the birds we had seen the day before, my dad still felt like hunting the same ridge as in the morning. I had decided to hunt by the watering hole we had scouted that afternoon. We both woke up at about 4:30 packed up and headed out. I drove my dads pickup to about a quarter mile from the watering hole. It was darker than the inside of a cow, but I could barely see the logging road that lead to the watering hole in the starlight. I didn't dare turn on my headlamp. I just walked carefully and slowly up the road. I passed by my setup by accident and could see the stars reflected in the water hole. I retraced my steps and inched my way into the inky undergrowth. I got settled in about a half an hour before the skies started to lighten. When the sun came up the forest woke up nicely. I heard an elk bugle way off in the distance. I'd never heard an elk bugle in the spring before and wondered if a hunter was using a bugle as a shock call. Whoever or what ever it was, it worked. About 300 yards up the hill and south of me a gobbler sounded off. Throughout the morning, until about 7:30 two more gobblers joined in. I chimed off a string of soft tree calls and the gobblers went nuts cutting each other off mid gobble. After about a half an hour of this mayhem, everything went quiet. When everything went so dead quiet I was worried that would be the last I heard of them. I called aggressively as per my plan. I continued to call every five minutes or so for the next half hour. I hadn't heard anything, so I was thinking that the excitement was over when a gobbler barked a gobble behind me about 200 yards off. I was so surprised I about jumped out of my skin. After a prescribed waiting period of 3 minutes of so, I yelped on my box. The gobbler hammered on my call, so I layed off and clucked with my mouth. He gobbled about two more times and then turned around. I couldn't see him yet, but knew he was headed the other way by the sound of the call. I yelped at him again and again to get him to come back. He finally hammered my call and just kept gobbling over and over. I knew he was coming in so I had moved to the other side of the tree I had set up on, I knew he wouldn't see my movement because he was still on the other side of the crest of a small hill. When he bobbed into view he was in full strut. As excited as he was, I expected him to be spitting and buzzing, but he was quiet except for bellowing a gobble every minute or so. He looked for my call, but I could see he didn't recognize any danger, as he casually strutted up the hill away from me. He was in full view so I could only cluck at him with my mouth or I would have been busted. Then he strutted away up the hill over the crest, gobbling the whole way and leaving me sitting there flat footed with my back to him. With the gobbler "safely" out of site I moved back around to where I was sitting before and made a decision to gobble at him in hopes of attracting him back. I fully expected to never see the bird again, but when I gobbled he turned back immediately from a hundred and fifty yards away on top of the hill. He gobbled my way again and then crept slowly down the hill toward me, I could tell he was really looking hard for a hen, so I was as still as the ground under me. When his head went behind a tree a hundred yards up the hill, I yelped at him. He gobbled, displayed and spit for just a second and then hopped into a clearing and looked right at me. I could almost feel his laser gaze searching for me. I froze in place like a statue, and he didn't spot me. Then he dropped low and ran right toward me. I thought, "crap, he's going to run right into my lap and I won't be able to get my gun up to my shoulder". Then he slowed down and turned left at about forty yards. It proved to be his undoing. If he had kept coming straight down the hill, he would have busted me had I tried to shoulder my shotgun, but to the left there was cover. He walked behind a ponderosa and I shouldered my shotgun in one quick smooth motion. I remember thinking that if he came out the other side I would take the shot. As he appeared on the other side of the tree, I tracked him on my bead for a fraction of a second. Then something weird happened to me. It felt like my gun the bird and my body were all connected together like some kind of crazy machine. I don't remember pulling the trigger, although I do remember calculating the shot. In that moment all in a millisecond everything came into focus. Not just visually, although there was that, but spiritually and mentally and everything else. I was awoken from my trance by the sound of the shot. I sprang up and racked another shell into my shotgun. When I saw the bird it was flapping and flopping on the ground. I could tell he would never get up again. I ran over and stood on the birds neck to be sure that he wouldn't. I stood over him, very emotional and after 20 seconds or so he ceased to move. I knelt down and petted his dark body, bowed my head and thanked God. I opened my eyes and told the bird I was sorry and thanked him. My excitement and sorrow were all one thing and I was completely overcome by emotion for a short time. I carried him back to my set up and prepared my things to bring him back to my dad's truck. He was very heavy to carry. I wrapped him in my hunter orange game bag that my wife had sewn for me and carried him out over my shoulder. I was elated and could hardly contain my self. On the way back to camp I listened to Bluegrass music and whoohooed a couple times. I felt on top of the world. When I got back to my camp I set to work field dressing the bird. I was struck by how hot it was when I reached in the body of the turkey to dress him. When my dad came back. I had on my orange stocking cap. I knew that would signal him as he hiked back into camp that I had gotten a bird. He told me that when he saw me in the orange cap he knew I had. It seemed like it took forever for him to come back from his hunt. My success was just as much his. He had been with me from the beginning and we had learned together.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Lonely Bachelor
Last spring turkey season my dad and I went out to our favorite hunting spot and set up a tent in the snow. It was kind of unusual for it to snow so late in the season. The next day when we got up the snow was still on the ground. I was excited because we would be able to see fresh turkey tracks in the snow. It was one day before the season opened. We had learned that for no apparent reason a big flock of turkeys could move out of an area that previously had a lot of activity, so we usually go out a day before season opens to be sure the birds are still where we think they are. We drove some of the roads above our camp after breakfast. We saw a bunch of hens about 200 yards off on the ridge we were on so we felt good about the area we were in. Later we fooled around in our camp, since we already had decided where we would set up in the morning. The next morning we hiked up the road in the dark and sat up on the ridge where we had seen the hens. We saw that they had come from the north, so we set up in that direction. It was cold in the morning. When the sun rose it was really quiet in the woods, which is unusual in the ponderosa woods in the morning. Usually there are woodpeckers, crows, and other animals chirping and squawking when the sun comes up. After the sun came up the wind picked up and it was hard to hear anything. All in all after seeing all those birds the day before, it was a very discouraging morning and the wind for me makes it very hard to hunt turkeys. I get discouraged pretty easily during my turkey hunts. While I love being out in the woods with my dad and enjoying the great outdoors, by the end of a fruitless day I can get pretty grumpy. I was stewing pretty good by the afternoon. We stopped by a watering hole to scout it on our way out to town and met a guy who had killed a turkey in the area. On our last day of the hunt the year before, we set up by the watering hole and the forest exploded with turkeys that flew out of their roosts. We could hear two different gobblers going off again and again. I had planned all year to sit in that same spot, but decided against it when we had seen those hens up on the ridge. On our way into town I was in worse shape mentally than I've ever been since we started turkey hunting. Just ready to call it quits. In an effort to save my sanity, I decided I would do three things. 1. I would be a lot more deliberate in decisions I made about my hunt. 2. I would call a lot. 3. For the second time ever I would go alone to my morning hunt. I think these decisions uped my odds the second I made them. I'll discuss each one in detail in other posts. That evening, I walked a logging road for about two miles squawking my box often while I walked. I didn't hear or see any birds, but I at least felt like I was doing something productive. As it turns out right after I got back to camp, we heard another hunters box call just 200 yards away by the fork in the road. I went over to say hello, but then realized that it was a real turkey hen that had high tailed it up the hill. I think it had heard my calls and was calling me to the flock up the hill. I had talked over the morning hunt with my dad and we had agreed to hunt different areas in the morning. With the encounter that night as well as the birds we had seen the day before, my dad still felt like hunting the same ridge as in the morning. I had decided to hunt by the watering hole we had scouted that afternoon. We both woke up at about 4:30 packed up and headed out. I drove my dads pickup to about a quarter mile from the watering hole. It was darker than the inside of a cow, but I could barely see the logging road that lead to the watering hole in the starlight. I didn't dare turn on my headlamp. I just walked carefully and slowly up the road. I passed by my setup by accident and could see the stars reflected in the water hole. I retraced my steps and inched my way into the inky undergrowth. I got settled in about a half an hour before the skies started to lighten. When the sun came up the forest woke up nicely. I heard an elk bugle way off in the distance. I'd never heard an elk bugle in the spring before and wondered if a hunter was using a bugle as a shock call. Whoever or what ever it was, it worked. About 300 yards up the hill and south of me a gobbler sounded off. Throughout the morning, until about 7:30 two more gobblers joined in. I chimed off a string of soft tree calls and the gobblers went nuts cutting each other off mid gobble. After about a half an hour of this mayhem, everything went quiet. When everything went so dead quiet I was worried that would be the last I heard of them. I called aggressively as per my plan. I continued to call every five minutes or so for the next half hour. I hadn't heard anything, so I was thinking that the excitement was over when a gobbler barked a gobble behind me about 200 yards off. I was so surprised I about jumped out of my skin. After a prescribed waiting period of 3 minutes of so, I yelped on my box. The gobbler hammered on my call, so I layed off and clucked with my mouth. He gobbled about two more times and then turned around. I couldn't see him yet, but knew he was headed the other way by the sound of the call. I yelped at him again and again to get him to come back. He finally hammered my call and just kept gobbling over and over. I knew he was coming in so I had moved to the other side of the tree I had set up on, I knew he wouldn't see my movement because he was still on the other side of the crest of a small hill. When he bobbed into view he was in full strut. As excited as he was, I expected him to be spitting and buzzing, but he was quiet except for bellowing a gobble every minute or so. He looked for my call, but I could see he didn't recognize any danger, as he casually strutted up the hill away from me. He was in full view so I could only cluck at him with my mouth or I would have been busted. Then he strutted away up the hill over the crest, gobbling the whole way and leaving me sitting there flat footed with my back to him. With the gobbler "safely" out of site I moved back around to where I was sitting before and made a decision to gobble at him in hopes of attracting him back. I fully expected to never see the bird again, but when I gobbled he turned back immediately from a hundred and fifty yards away on top of the hill. He gobbled my way again and then crept slowly down the hill toward me, I could tell he was really looking hard for a hen, so I was as still as the ground under me. When his head went behind a tree a hundred yards up the hill, I yelped at him. He gobbled, displayed and spit for just a second and then hopped into a clearing and looked right at me. I could almost feel his laser gaze searching for me. I froze in place like a statue, and he didn't spot me. Then he dropped low and ran right toward me. I thought, "crap, he's going to run right into my lap and I won't be able to get my gun up to my shoulder". Then he slowed down and turned left at about forty yards. It proved to be his undoing. If he had kept coming straight down the hill, he would have busted me had I tried to shoulder my shotgun, but to the left there was cover. He walked behind a ponderosa and I shouldered my shotgun in one quick smooth motion. I remember thinking that if he came out the other side I would take the shot. As he appeared on the other side of the tree, I tracked him on my bead for a fraction of a second. Then something weird happened to me. It felt like my gun the bird and my body were all connected together like some kind of crazy machine. I don't remember pulling the trigger, although I do remember calculating the shot. In that moment all in a millisecond everything came into focus. Not just visually, although there was that, but spiritually and mentally and everything else. I was awoken from my trance by the sound of the shot. I sprang up and racked another shell into my shotgun. When I saw the bird it was flapping and flopping on the ground. I could tell he would never get up again. I ran over and stood on the birds neck to be sure that he wouldn't. I stood over him, very emotional and after 20 seconds or so he ceased to move. I knelt down and petted his dark body, bowed my head and thanked God. I opened my eyes and told the bird I was sorry and thanked him. My excitement and sorrow were all one thing and I was completely overcome by emotion for a short time. I carried him back to my set up and prepared my things to bring him back to my dad's truck. He was very heavy to carry. I wrapped him in my hunter orange game bag that my wife had sewn for me and carried him out over my shoulder. I was elated and could hardly contain my self. On the way back to camp I listened to Bluegrass music and whoohooed a couple times. I felt on top of the world. When I got back to my camp I set to work field dressing the bird. I was struck by how hot it was when I reached in the body of the turkey to dress him. When my dad came back. I had on my orange stocking cap. I knew that would signal him as he hiked back into camp that I had gotten a bird. He told me that when he saw me in the orange cap he knew I had. It seemed like it took forever for him to come back from his hunt. My success was just as much his. He had been with me from the beginning and we had learned together.
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