I personally have hunted turkeys once. I drew a Utah tag about ten years ago. It was unsuccessful, didn't even see a bird.
Fast forward to Friday and Saturday of this week. Utah has a three day youth hunt prior to the Utah general hunt. I took my two hunting age kids out. Friday saw a little old sign, lots of sandhill cranes, herrons, geese and ducks, but no turkeys.
Saturday we setup in a new area with a lot of droppings. Placed jake and hen decoys and proceeded to call. About an hour into it, we got one gobble a few hundred yards off. We couldn't agree exactly which direction it came from. We were sitting in a sage and grass flat with three canyons that feed into it.
Man that short one second gobble was like a 10cc shot of epinephrine and I didn't even have a gun! We waited and called for about 45 minutes more, then moved to a new set above. From that point on we found a new campsite to pack into and saw a bunch of ruffled grouse and a few mule deer.
Through the rest of May we'll now have three tags to fill. Good thing for me, because I need to hike. As my kids made some speed and age comments as we did some prolonged up hill streches. Who would have thought that a gobble could get me so excited.
Fast forward to Friday and Saturday of this week. Utah has a three day youth hunt prior to the Utah general hunt. I took my two hunting age kids out. Friday saw a little old sign, lots of sandhill cranes, herrons, geese and ducks, but no turkeys.
Saturday we setup in a new area with a lot of droppings. Placed jake and hen decoys and proceeded to call. About an hour into it, we got one gobble a few hundred yards off. We couldn't agree exactly which direction it came from. We were sitting in a sage and grass flat with three canyons that feed into it.
Man that short one second gobble was like a 10cc shot of epinephrine and I didn't even have a gun! We waited and called for about 45 minutes more, then moved to a new set above. From that point on we found a new campsite to pack into and saw a bunch of ruffled grouse and a few mule deer.
Through the rest of May we'll now have three tags to fill. Good thing for me, because I need to hike. As my kids made some speed and age comments as we did some prolonged up hill streches. Who would have thought that a gobble could get me so excited.
