Came Back From My 2009 Spring Hunt On Saturday

Another spring turkey hunt has gone by for me. Yet again I have come back empty handed. It really is a wonder that anyone ever pulls out a Merriam's from public land in New Mexico. The weather was pretty tough this year, but that worked out in my advantage one morning. Usually we get up at about 4:30 in the morning make coffee and head out. If the place is within a few miles that gets us in our set up about 15 minutes before the sky starts to light up from the twilight. Thursday night was really cold. A guy I talked to said the temperature was about 12 degrees. I was cold inside my sleeping bag. I talked to my dad at 4:30 and he wasn't going to get up so I didn't get up either. At 5:15am I heard a turkey gobbling in his tree about a quarter mile from our tent. It was enough to stir me out of the bag. My dad made up his mind already and stayed in his sleeping bag. I worked my way up to about 300 yds of where the turkey was gobbling, but didn't want to get in closer because the lay of the land may have tipped the bird off. I sat and listened to him gobble over and over from his roost. At one point a truck drove slowly up the logging road about halfway down into the canyon. I could tell by the way they were driving that they were listening for birds. They drove back to were the road ended and turned around and drove back. That took them about a 20 minutes to drive the road and neither me nor the turkey made a peep the whole time. The very second that I couldn't hear the engine from that truck in the distance, the turkey started gobbling again (haha). Unfortunately the turkey when he came out of his roost went directly away from my set up. I gave it an hour or so before heading back to get coffee. Just as I was about to head down the hill I heard a hen yelping. I wasn't sure if it was a real hen or my dad down the hill. I yelped back for fun thinking it may be my dad and a gobbler hammered back at me about 100 yds. to the east. I worked my way to a good set up and tried to close the distance between me and the gobbler. I was in a great position but could tell by the gobbles that the bird was hung up. After waiting impatiently for a short time I moved a little closer to where the bird was gobbling and spotted the problem. A cow was standing around munching grass nearby and while I don't think that turkeys are particularly scared of cows I don't think they like to get too close either. To make a long story short, I moved around several times trying to get the turkey to come in closer and ended up seeing the turkey run away into the woods as fast as it's little legs would carry it. Lesson learned: Repositioning is very risky. You better have a good reason for moving and a conservative plan should be in place to minimize the chance of being busted.

(I started this post right after turkey season. Went ahead and finished it up today for posting.

The Smell of the Pines

Last night as I headed out to my car I smelled pine in the air. It was really strange because I live in the Phoenix. I often smell the creosote after it has rained, which is very pleasant, but last night I could smell pine. It was the honey sweet pine smell of Ponderosa forest, either it came drifting down from Mt. Ord 50 miles away or it came to me through the ethereal to remind me of where I wish I was.

Trying Something New

Turkey season is coming up soon and I've been thinking about successful hunting techniques. It is so imperative to be in a good spot early in the morning while it is still dark. Last year, I had what I consider some success in my hunt. I wasn't able to get a bird, but I have the begginings of a new technique that I think long term will really help me be successful. This year I would like to find some more concentrated hot spots like the one where I killed my first turkey. Here is my plan on how I'm going to do it.
First a little background on what I have done in the past and how I think it has held me back a little bit. I have had little to no success "roosting" the birds. Most of the time in the places I've hunted the turkeys don't want to gobble much in the evening, so my morning hunt has always been a bit of a crap shoot and is chosen by turkey sightings while driving around or where I have found fresh sign. I would get settled into a spot well before sunrise and hope that I was in a good location. To some degree I've been lucky and gotten close to roosting turkeys using these methods, but often I've heard no gobbles in the morning or sometimes I'll hear a gobble but way off in the distance. In my mind no gobbles meant that there WAS a gobbler nearby and that he just wasn't gobbling. Also, if I heard one way off in the distance that meant to me that he could hear me and would eventually come to my call. I would be wary of getting up and moving, because I didn't want to disrupt the area that I was in and thereby cause these turkeys to leave.
Well I have found out in the last two or three years that the woods in New Mexico are a big place and an area is likely quiet because there isn't anything there. Second, that turkey that I hear a half a mile away has his own things to do and isn't likely to come running a half a mile to my call. Third, making plans and executing tactics based on what you DON'T see and hear is very tempting, but usually futile. Unless your reaction is to move on, turkeys that you can't see or hear are really hard to hunt. This seems like common sense, but when you have been working your butt off and you have little or no evidence of turkeys in the area, it is very easy come up with scenarios that apparently make your hard work worthwhile.
This year I plan to for sure move toward turkeys that I hear way off in the distance. Then the next morning start where I heard him last and hope he's still nearby. In this way I'll eventually home in on him and hopeful find a new hot spot in doing so.

Fixing Personal Problems

Today I want to explore fixing personal problems and write it down so that I can look back at my thoughts later and see if they still make sense. Here is a fictional situation that needs to be resolved: Whenever you see a willow tree you are filled with emotion and begin to weep uncontrollably. You feel that you know the reason why you react this way as when you were ten you father was killed under a willow tree. However, on the same day and time your friend Sam also witnessed his father dying under the same tree and does not have the same issues as you, at least not with willow trees. The problem is that there are willow trees all around your office and your work is suffering terribly. This problem needs to be resolved.
Option 1: Solve the problem logistically. Move some place where there are no willow trees and make a new life for your self.
Option 2: Solve the problem head on and get someone to replace the trees at your work or chop them all down yourself in the middle of the night.
Option 3: Deal with the emotion, so that you can live at peace with willow trees.
Most of time you have to fix your problems using option 3. Option 2 is a resource hog and option 1 precludes any type of long term relationship in your life.
So let’s drill down on how to fix your problem using Option 3.
Solution 1: Work through this issue yourself.
Pro: Who knows you better than yourself?
Con: Most people don't know themselves very well.
Solution 2: Get help from a friend or family.
Pro: Your friends and family care about you and want the best for you.
Con: Sometimes advice from friends or family can have a hidden agenda or might be just telling you what you want to hear. Overall not very objective.
Solution 3.0: Get outside help.
Pro: Advice is somewhat more objective.
Con: The advice usually comes from a model that doesn't always apply to you and your special circumstance.
Solution 4: Get professional help.
Pro: You can get advice that works great.
Con: You’re relying on the pro to know what works. Pros make mistakes too.
Solution 5: Ask God for help.
Pro: God cares about us, knows what's right for us, and always gives us the right answer.
Con: It can be difficult if not impossible sometimes to hear what he is saying to you.

So there it is. Is there some solution here that is "better" than another? Are different solutions needed for different problems? Does using one solution ever preclude the ability to use another solution? Should a certain solution never be used because it is just too faulty? Do certain solutions work better for certain personality types? Does a solution type work better in certain situations? Should we all just throw our hands up in the air and not deal with problems because it’s just too hard?

Turkey Blog to Banjo Blog

I haven't been blogging much lately, because rather than think about doing something, I've been actually doing it. I'm sure I will have more turkey related stuff after next week. I'm going out to New Mexico on Sunday and am very excited to go turkey hunting, but kind of ran out of material for continuing a turkey hunting blog. I am currently learning how to play the banjo that I borrowed from my dad. I am having a blast and look forward to getting a new instrument. I've been saving my pennies. It will take me a while, but in the mean time I'll practice using my dad's Harmony banjo from the mid seventies. It doesn't sound too bad for a plastic banjo. I've learned the words to a couple songs and can sing to a slowed down roll for those songs. Its fun and is getting me started. I also learned a couple of easy songs from tabulature. Tab is helping me learn my way around the fingerboard and a lot of fun. I have been practicing some rolls and also the basic frailing strum, but have spent most of my time on learning to sing while chording and the tab.

Banjo Decisions

So I got my dad's banjo and I am starting to lean towards frailing now. I'm thinking that my musical ability doesn't fit with my musical ambitions. When I look at the Scruggs (Bluegrass) style of banjo picking, it seems like a long road of practicing rolls and learning how to fit licks and rolls together in a kind of seemingly magical way to then play a song. Combine that with the speed that Bluegrass guys play and you have the recipe for years and years of practice before you can play any kind of recognizable song. Of course there are those guys out there that have a natural musical aptitude to make that kind of practice pay eventually. Unfortunately I have to be realistic and I've realized that my goal of playing for my friends and family may mean trying to get in faster at the ground level. Of course I haven't made the effort to start to learn how to frail yet, so I may run into more trouble. Either way, my commitment to practicing every day should pay off some time, if not immediately. In the end I imagine that I will eventually learn a little bit of both Scruggs style and frailing. Here is a video of a guy my dad's friend referred me to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo0cy0REMY8

Banjo

I've been in a flurry of activity lately learning about the banjo. I'm looking to take up the instrument and am very excited about it. My dad played when I was young and I have always enjoyed the sound. I played guitar in high school, albeit poorly, and want to have another crack at a musical instrument. I want to make some music and the banjo seems very appropriate for the turkey woods once the gobblers have all gone to sleep. Who knows maybe with the banjo I'll finally have a shock call that works. I'm going to try to borrow my dad's old banjo to get me started until I can make a good decision about what kind of instrument that I want to get. One thing that is giving me a lot of angst is the bluegrass vs. open backed banjo dilemma. Here are some of the pros and cons for each. I love bluegrass music. Ever since I got XM radio I listen to the Bluegrass Track 14 a lot. I really like the hard driving banjo in bluegrass songs. The down side is a lot of bluegrass is very fast paced and will be hard for a beginner. As for the open backed banjo, there is a lot going for it. It is the instrument of choice for folk music. Folk music is great for singing around the camp fire, especially with kids. The instrument is lighter and cheaper. The problem is that it doesn't seem like as much fun to me. The open back lends itself to a technique called frailing, which I was less than interested in until my dad's friend shared a link with me to an artist/teacher named Patrick Costello. He can really make frailing look fun. It seems to me like a fellow ought to make a choice about what style he goes for at the beginning as both frailing and finger picking take a year or more to become proficient. Right now I'm leaning towards bluegrass. Before I talked to my dad's friend I was sure I wanted to do bluegrass, but now I'm not so sure. The downside of all this wonderful information on the internet is that every time you answer a question you find three more you need to answer.