The alarm clock rang much too early for my liking. College life had already spoiled me. Not having classes until 12, meant not getting up at 5:30 a.m. I groggily punched the snooze button and rolled back over.
As you can tell I'm not the most enthusiastic turkey hunter in the world.
Anyway, fast forward 30 minutes, and I was tucked back in the blind, trusty recurve in hand, waiting on the dawn. My decoys were out in the field waiting for action.
This year I had a trick up my sleeve. I had found a roadkill hen, and since I'm a taxidermist, I decided to have a real decoy! I named her Kelley.
Kelley had been torn up bad on the highway, but I managed to piece her together enough to hopefully fool a big tom.
As the first rays of sunlight slowly shone over the trees, I heard it... gobble!!... I quickly responded with a sweet little hen call...gobble!!... Man, this was going to be easy, I thought. Apparently, I jinxed myself. The gobbler didn’t say another word and left for parts unknown.
Finishing the mornings hunt yielded only a couple of hens and a lone coyote, who wouldn’t beckon to my attempts to convince him I was a dying rabbit.
Oh well, I guess we can't be good at everything.
A little while later in the morning, I got a call from my dad. Apparently while I was being entertained by everything but a gobbler, he had some better luck.
He had been sneaking along the edge of the fields we have permission to hunt when he caught a glimpse of a big tom in full strut.
Calling was to no avail since he already had two hens with him, so dad just watched. Suddenly, the upper hand was switched.
The tom, while in full strut, didn’t notice the hens cross the hedgerow and get out of his sight. When he realized they were gone, he quickly began searching for them, but instead of crossing the hedgerow, he went parallel to it. This gave my dad the opportunity to backtrack around and get in the fencerow where the tom was headed.
At 51 yards the tom strutted out on the hill, giving my dad quite a show before succumbing to
the side effects of overdosing on heavy-shot.
The next morning, I was back in the blind. I was hoping for a more exciting morning, as I still hadn’t seen a legal bird.
After a few hours of no gobbles, and no turkey sightings, I packed up and got ready to leave. A group of deer nearly scared me half to death as they ran by, apparently spooked by my newly placed ground blind.
As soon as the field was cleared of deer, I got out and headed home.
A quick meet-up with my dad, and we headed out for a bird that he had worked earlier that morning. I switched the recurve for the scattergun since this was going to be a quick run and gun hunt... like my pun?
We worked for a few minutes, and finally got the bird to gobble. A second gobble to pinpoint his location and we were off.
We found the bird strutting in the edge of a fresh clear-cut. I couldn’t get any closer than 90 or so yards, so he slipped away unscathed. There was so much pollen, we decided to cut the hunt short and head back to the house.
A couple days later found me sneaking around the fields where my dad got the big tom. With the amount of turkey poop that I found, I knew there had to be a lot of turkeys!
After a couple hours of walking, with no birds heard/spotted, I began to get just a little exhausted. I finally called it quits and headed to the truck.
The land-owner is out of state a lot, so when I saw that he was home, I pulled in to have a chat. He told me that he saw 15 turkeys the evening before out in the field. That was exciting news!
Saturday morning, I woke up at 5:30 to a heavy pounding of rain on the metal roof. I turned my alarm off and slept in, just to find its still raining! Finally, about 5 in the evening, the rain let up enough to get out after the birds once again.
The break in the rain plus the knowledge of a bunch of turkeys got us going out the door.
My dad and I quickly donned our camo and headed back to the fields. The turkeys still were hardly gobbling at all, so with no birds to pinpoint, we decided to just do a quick sneak-hunt around the fields.
We promptly found a whole herd of cows who proceeded to stampede away from our location. We managed to slip around them and continued our hunt. Much to our dismay, we could find no turkeys at all. So, with downed egos, we headed back to the truck.
By this point I was beginning to get aggravated. I had only seen one gobbler thus far in the season and had only heard a couple gobble. The thought that I still had over a week to get a turkey on the ground was comforting, but I was really beginning to wonder, is it actually going to happen?
When we arrived home, I was horrified to learn that our dog had gotten ahold of Kelley and almost demolished her.
This was sickening news since I had planned on using her during the last week of my hunt!
Sunday evening, after church, I headed back out to the fields to work on building a brush blind. I decided not to carry my gun, since I wouldn’t be hunting (never do that). When I rounded the bend, there were three monster turkeys standing in the field! I quickly backed out and hurried back to the house to grab my dad.
We slipped into the edge of the field that I had saw the birds in and started scanning the hedgerows. Suddenly, while in the middle of crossing a creek, my dad motioned to get down. We knelt in the creek and I steadied my shotgun, this is it, I thought.
Movement in the hedgerow drew my attention and the safety on the Remington 870 clicked into “fire” mode. The seconds ticked by as the birds fed toward us. I was quickly disappointed to find that it was three, huge-bodied jakes. (Jakes are illegal in AR) As much as I tried, I couldn’t grow a 6-inch beard on any of the birds, so out came the camera and I snapped a couple of pictures. This spooked the birds, so we proceeded on.
Since we were near the brush blind, I had originally intended to build, we decided to go on over and work on it.
Once I was satisfied at how it looked, we hustled back to the truck.
As you can tell I'm not the most enthusiastic turkey hunter in the world.
Anyway, fast forward 30 minutes, and I was tucked back in the blind, trusty recurve in hand, waiting on the dawn. My decoys were out in the field waiting for action.
This year I had a trick up my sleeve. I had found a roadkill hen, and since I'm a taxidermist, I decided to have a real decoy! I named her Kelley.
Kelley had been torn up bad on the highway, but I managed to piece her together enough to hopefully fool a big tom.
As the first rays of sunlight slowly shone over the trees, I heard it... gobble!!... I quickly responded with a sweet little hen call...gobble!!... Man, this was going to be easy, I thought. Apparently, I jinxed myself. The gobbler didn’t say another word and left for parts unknown.
Finishing the mornings hunt yielded only a couple of hens and a lone coyote, who wouldn’t beckon to my attempts to convince him I was a dying rabbit.
Oh well, I guess we can't be good at everything.
A little while later in the morning, I got a call from my dad. Apparently while I was being entertained by everything but a gobbler, he had some better luck.
He had been sneaking along the edge of the fields we have permission to hunt when he caught a glimpse of a big tom in full strut.
Calling was to no avail since he already had two hens with him, so dad just watched. Suddenly, the upper hand was switched.
The tom, while in full strut, didn’t notice the hens cross the hedgerow and get out of his sight. When he realized they were gone, he quickly began searching for them, but instead of crossing the hedgerow, he went parallel to it. This gave my dad the opportunity to backtrack around and get in the fencerow where the tom was headed.
At 51 yards the tom strutted out on the hill, giving my dad quite a show before succumbing to
the side effects of overdosing on heavy-shot.
The next morning, I was back in the blind. I was hoping for a more exciting morning, as I still hadn’t seen a legal bird.
After a few hours of no gobbles, and no turkey sightings, I packed up and got ready to leave. A group of deer nearly scared me half to death as they ran by, apparently spooked by my newly placed ground blind.
As soon as the field was cleared of deer, I got out and headed home.
A quick meet-up with my dad, and we headed out for a bird that he had worked earlier that morning. I switched the recurve for the scattergun since this was going to be a quick run and gun hunt... like my pun?
We worked for a few minutes, and finally got the bird to gobble. A second gobble to pinpoint his location and we were off.
We found the bird strutting in the edge of a fresh clear-cut. I couldn’t get any closer than 90 or so yards, so he slipped away unscathed. There was so much pollen, we decided to cut the hunt short and head back to the house.
A couple days later found me sneaking around the fields where my dad got the big tom. With the amount of turkey poop that I found, I knew there had to be a lot of turkeys!
After a couple hours of walking, with no birds heard/spotted, I began to get just a little exhausted. I finally called it quits and headed to the truck.
The land-owner is out of state a lot, so when I saw that he was home, I pulled in to have a chat. He told me that he saw 15 turkeys the evening before out in the field. That was exciting news!
Saturday morning, I woke up at 5:30 to a heavy pounding of rain on the metal roof. I turned my alarm off and slept in, just to find its still raining! Finally, about 5 in the evening, the rain let up enough to get out after the birds once again.
The break in the rain plus the knowledge of a bunch of turkeys got us going out the door.
My dad and I quickly donned our camo and headed back to the fields. The turkeys still were hardly gobbling at all, so with no birds to pinpoint, we decided to just do a quick sneak-hunt around the fields.
We promptly found a whole herd of cows who proceeded to stampede away from our location. We managed to slip around them and continued our hunt. Much to our dismay, we could find no turkeys at all. So, with downed egos, we headed back to the truck.
By this point I was beginning to get aggravated. I had only seen one gobbler thus far in the season and had only heard a couple gobble. The thought that I still had over a week to get a turkey on the ground was comforting, but I was really beginning to wonder, is it actually going to happen?
When we arrived home, I was horrified to learn that our dog had gotten ahold of Kelley and almost demolished her.
This was sickening news since I had planned on using her during the last week of my hunt!
Sunday evening, after church, I headed back out to the fields to work on building a brush blind. I decided not to carry my gun, since I wouldn’t be hunting (never do that). When I rounded the bend, there were three monster turkeys standing in the field! I quickly backed out and hurried back to the house to grab my dad.
We slipped into the edge of the field that I had saw the birds in and started scanning the hedgerows. Suddenly, while in the middle of crossing a creek, my dad motioned to get down. We knelt in the creek and I steadied my shotgun, this is it, I thought.
Movement in the hedgerow drew my attention and the safety on the Remington 870 clicked into “fire” mode. The seconds ticked by as the birds fed toward us. I was quickly disappointed to find that it was three, huge-bodied jakes. (Jakes are illegal in AR) As much as I tried, I couldn’t grow a 6-inch beard on any of the birds, so out came the camera and I snapped a couple of pictures. This spooked the birds, so we proceeded on.
Since we were near the brush blind, I had originally intended to build, we decided to go on over and work on it.
Once I was satisfied at how it looked, we hustled back to the truck.
