Well, the weather was looking bad for Saturday, so we decided to stay home Friday night and leave Saturday morning to get an afternoon hunt in. Driving up I-55 looking at all the flooding made me realize how lucky I was just to have been inconvenienced by the weather. A lot of folks have more to worry about then a weekend of turkey hunting. My thought and prayers are with them.
Once we get to the camp around noon, Rusty goes and starts catching a few bass while I go check a few cameras we had out. While I'm out making my rounds I do see a tom in an area we like to hunt, but didn't. I get back to the camp and Rusty has caught 5 or 6 bass, but we left the fillet knife at home, so it was all catch and release. I join him for a few minutes and catch 2, and then the rain chased us up to the trailer. It poured for a few hours swelling the creeks back up leaving us very few options on where we could hunt, but with the weather the way it was I had little interest in trying. Around 4:30 it slacks off and we throw on our rain gear and head to a box stand behind the camp where we watch it storm till dark.
The morning hunt starts out in a semi flooded hardwood bottom where the weekend before I heard no less than 3 birds gobbling. We slip in to a great position before daylight taking our time being very quiet. I'm optimistic that we are in excellent shape for a kill. Daylight comes and goes without a sound not a gobble or any turkey sound heard. After about an hour we pull out and head to another area. It took us about a ½ hour to walk to where I wanted to hunt and just as we crest a ridge, turkeys bust off like a giant covey of quail, at least 15 flew off. Rusty and I freeze and he said "dad, I almost told you to call in the bottom". As we stand there, I see 5 heads periscope up in front of us slightly left, all hens. Then I see a tom or jake head just to the right of them. I couldn't see the bodies, just the heads. Really think it was a tom judging by the size of it. I tell Rusty to shoot the one on the right, but he can't see it. I'm a couple inches taller than he is and had a good view of it. He can see the hens, but not the tom. The hens move off to our left and we get ready for the tom to follow, but he disappeared. No clue where he went, but as we moved up he was gone. We then set up, to see if they will try and regroup – they do. A few hens filter past us, but no boys. After around 1.5 hours we move in the direction the birds seemed to be heading, we hadn't gone far when a bird gobbles on his own pretty close to us. We quickly set up and Rusty sees them at 90 yards, I got a good look at one it was a long beard there was another bird with it of the same size, but I can't confirm what it was. I suspect another nice tom. After 40 minutes with no luck we move off trying to kill one of them. Long story short, we bump the flock again and sent them flying off in all directions. After that he decides he'd had enough rejection for one day and calls the hunt a few minutes till noon. We didn't kill one, but were in them for most of the morning. All in all a good hunt. Below is the only picture I got off the cameras.
