Last weekend I got home from my first ever LONG turkey escapade. I took a week off work which translated to 10 days off. The first leg of my journey was to head to Iowa for my first ever crack at an Eastern, and do it on public land. That Leg of the journey is somewhere around here on the forum titled (Wyoming boy heads to Iowa).
I said all along that it would be perfect to kill in Iowa on day 3 or 4 and hunt my way back across Nebraska, but I was prepared to hunt 10 days in Iowa if need be! Well as luck would have it, I scored on day 3!
I drove a few hours into Nebraska and hit a spot my dad and I hit last year for Nebraska's archery season. We both had an extra day off work for Good Friday/easter weekend which as you guys may remember was real early last year. So we made the most of it and headed to Nebraska. Neither one of us killed but we both had shots at birds and were constantly in birds. I felt I knew enough about the area to be successful. Well I was wrong. After a day and a half all I had found were Jakes. I finally found FIVE long beards all in the corner of public and my failed setup apparently sent most of them into private. After another day and a half trying to catch a longbeard in that corner of public, it was looking pretty bleak. I decided to go explore and head closer to home.
I arrived at my second location, that I had only seen from the Internet, mid day. As I drove around It really looked promising but I didn't see much for turkey sign in a few short walks trying to strike up a bird. I ended up seeing 2 Jakes with a hen and promptly roosted them. As I headed back to camp I found a hard to reach corner with multiple birds gobbling! PERFECT! I was listening to them from a half mile away but I pinned the closest one the best I could.
The next morning I knew I had a great opportunity here and didn't want to squander it. I got up plenty early as to beat everyone to my predetermined parking location. I was hesitant on where to set up as there was no moon and I didn't want to use a lot of light, but I ended up getting into a great location just in the Gray of morning and setting up.
I was set up on a bench above the river bottom and I figured I was about 100 yards from the bird. At first light, a bird 300 yards or more to my left started gobbling and I thought "man...I didn't do that very well." After he gobbled 10 times or so the bird in front of me hammered right where I thought he was! YES! I gave him a couple sets of tree clucks during the next 45 minutes of which he never responded to. I heard two turkeys fly down and knew this was about to get tough. I heard drumming immediately and spotted him about 80 yards out strutting behind a hen. She never made a peep as I tried to cut and yelp and either draw him 30 more yards for a look, or make her mad. Neither worked. She started to pull him down the spine of that bench and into the river bottom. I knew I either had to act now or wait him out so I slid down the bank into the river bottom, circled around, and killed him at about 10 steps
An eastern and a Rio in the same trip, along with a couple western merriams earlier in the year. It was a great season!
