Finally meeting a team member tomorrow. My Idaho trip worked out well last year and I offered Rut to come out this year. Hope we will get a break in the weather to give some of those Merriums a thrashing. We will have wifi in the Condo and should be able to give some updates....
Glad to be getting after em again.
Right On! ;D Enjoy and have fun boys.
:fud: :OGani:
Good luck guys. Hope you get into some birds.
Came close the first afternoon. We were slipping down a road kinda scout/hunting. We'd heard a couple of gobblers but nobody wanted to play. Then around 1800 a bird gobbled on his own just down the hill from us. I sat next to a stump and Hayudog went over to a tree. I floated out some sweet notes on my diaphragm and he gobbled this time on the road just up from Hayudog. He turned and faced up the road while I softly clucked and yelped. Then Hayudog floated out some notes on his slate. He double gobbled that time but on the hill above us. We both turned and aimed our guns uphill. This bird was danger close!!! Then we heard failure approaching.
We are hunting a HUGE piece of private property, but the old guy that owns it let's in hunters, fisherman, hikers........and bikers. So, getting back to the story......
Right as we were scanning the hilltop waiting for the gobbler to appear, a family of bikers roar up the road with 6 dirt bikes, a quad and a Ranger. They were making enough noise to wake the dead. Needless to say the gobbler beat a hasty retreat and never gobbled to us again. Shortly after, we watched an elk grazing.
This morning we went out again. We both worked birds without success. But we heard lots of gobbles and I had a white tipped hen come in for a few minutes.
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Sounds like yer in the game there. Keep after em!
:anim_25:
The close encounter for me this morning.
I had left Rut at a strutting spot we found yesterday that had enough gobbler dropping to start a fertilizer plant.
I'd worked out over the morning about 1/2 a mile on an old logging road. Heard a few distant gobbles , but no real players. Got a text from Rut that he was working his way back, so I got up from a spot that I had been sitting for a half hour or so. Walked back along the road about fifty yards and a gobbler self gobbles on a road below me. I cut the distance by about half as he's below me just self gobbling. I get seated, run my slate. He gobbles back. I figure...it's on. Five minutes later the next gobble, he's going away, and I hear him fade away. Scratch my head, and head back up to the upper road to walk out.
I get a couple hundred yards closer to the truck, figure it's new ground , so I run the slate. Bird on the lower road responds. Same deal. I get ready. Figure he's going to come... He walks back to where we first started this. Now he's gobbling every minute.
New plan. With him running his mouth, I'll get in tight. I work my way in on him. He's around a corner. No more than 50 yards. But I can't see him. I get set. Run the call. He responds. For the next twenty minutes, he'd walk almost to the corner gobbling. Then walk away. He did that at least 4x. And this is where I screwed up....
There was an embankment that over looked his strutt area. Figured I could get there and shoot him when he did one of his turn arounds. I make the move. Do my crawl. Just about as I was getting ready to peek over he gobbled below me. Ten yards maybe. He then proceeded to walk around the corner, over to the tree that I had been leaning against. Just couldn't close the deal. Too much cover in the way. Never boogered him. He just walked off and never gobbled again.
Pretty long story for not killing a bird!!!!
Stories like that get you pumped up. You and Rut keep after them. :firefighter:
Keep on en guys