This years turkey hunt was one to remember. I have a good friend that I got hooked on turkey hunting last spring that I like to hunt with. We made a plan this past winter to hunt the first Friday (5/3/19) and Saturday (5/4/19) in May to try and fill our tags. Maine allows you to take 2 bearded birds per spring per person. So we had 4 tags to fill between the two of us, the pressure was on. We like to hunt a power transmission line that is generally rolling topography and offers good visibility. The power line gets mowed at least once a year and the birds love being in it. It seems every crest in the rolling topography is a strut zone for birds. There is a major wetland that the powerline goes over which also attracts birds like a magnet. I was checking the weather forecast all week leading up the hunt and conditions couldn't have been better. Friday was overcast, very low wind, and mid 50s. It rained really hard Friday night into Saturday morning ending around 3 am. Just perfect time to get the birds fired up off the roost that morning. Saturday was the same weather conditions as Friday.
I got up to my friends place around 7 pm on Thursday the night before the hunt. Perfect timing as it gets dark around 8. We piled in and headed out to the powerline to see if we could put some birds to bed. We covered some area trying to solicit a shock gobble from the owl hooter but to no avail. I was sorta getting worried there weren't going to be any birds around after not hearing any shock gobbles. I don't live local to the area so I hadn't been able to do any pre-season scouting, just going off of what we had encountered out there last year. We got back to the truck and I gave the crow call one rip to see if maybe that would get a response. Sure enough that did the trick. We had pin pointed him in a pine stand about 1/2 mile up the powerline from the truck and formed a plan of attack for the morning.
We got up at 2:30 Friday morning to get ready. I wanted to be able to sneak in there as close as we could to the roost without waking the bird. We snuck up through the woods along the powerline and got pretty close to where we thought the roost was. I set out a simple decoy spread of an Avian-X breeder hen and jake about 15 yards in front of us in the powerline. We set up along the woods edge of the powerline and waited patiently for our newly found friend to awaken. Around 4:45 he starts to fire off and man we are a lot closer to him that we had though. He couldn't have been more than 30-35 yards down the powerline up a big pine tree. We sat tight as legal shooting was until just before 5:00. He was gobbling his head off on his own. I let off a couple soft tree yelps from my slate pot and he went crazy. Double and triple gobbles he couldn't help himself. A little after 5 I heard his wings take off and he flew about 70 yards out into the middle of the powerline. He was alone. I let out two short purrs and he started his way into the decoys, strutting the whole way in. He strutted right on top of the decoys for a few moments. Made a simple 15 yard shot and he flopped around a little bit, a pretty nice bird to boot. 21.5lbs, 8.5" beard, and 1-1/16" spurs.
Maine requires you to tag turkeys at a check station so we left and tagged the bird and got some coffee. Dropped the bird off at my friends cooler and back out we went. At this point it was about 7:30 and we started running and gunning. We found a high point in the powerline and started glassing for birds in strut zones. Sure enough, about a mile down the powerline there was a bird strutting on the far side of the large wetland. We watched him for a solid 15 minutes. He was stuck in his zone like glue, so we formed a plan to hook out around the wetland through the woods and pop out in the powerline to check to see where he was at. A quick 45 minute hike through the woods we popped out on the far side of the wetland and peaked out. He was still in his strut zone, still 300 yards to close the distance between us. We made note of what power pole he was near and worked our way back up through the woods. We popped out just before where we thought the birds were, sure enough he was still there. There was about 80 yards between us at this point. I also noticed he had two hens with him. Great, this could be tough. I let off a couple of soft purrs from my copper pot call and it peaked his interest. He puffed right up and started looking towards the wood line where I was at. He didn't gobble once but simply strutted and looked for me. I held tight and stayed quiet. He was crisscrossing his way to me through some thick brush. I had a couple of shot opportunities at 45 yards but didn't feel comfortable as all I could see was his head above the brush. I sat tight and he continued to quietly working his way over to where he head those sweet purrs. Finally he got to 25 yards and offered me all of his neck and head. That was enough for me as I know my gun shoots a super tight pattern. I put the red dot on him and let him have. I shot and the bird simply disappeared. I thought I had missed. Nope, he simply dropped without flopping once, like a sack of potatoes. This bird wasn't anything special, a very young Tom. 14lbs, 6.5" beard, and 5/8" spurs. He had two real hens with him and just started to get greedy. I put the game tote on him and we started heading back towards the truck.
We noticed there was a bird strutting back across the wetland towards where the truck was parked. We figured we'd make a go at him if he was still there when we got back across around the wetland. Sure enough we got back to the other side of the wetland and he was still strutting in his zone. But he had a pile of hens with him, must be a boss Tom. The power company had been working on the powerline and there were some equipment swamp mats stacked up in the middle of the powerline. The bird was on the far side of the powerline from us. We went low and slow and kept the stack of mats between us. We got to the stack of mats and peaked over, the bird was still there. He had at least 6 hens with him. I tried calling to get him to come in, but he wasn't having it. So we snuck up along the stack of mats to close the distance the best we could. We got to the end of the stack and peered over. He was directly in front of us, about 55-60 yards away. The hens had moved away from him. He was strutting facing us. We talked a bit about where or not we should take the shot. I knew my pattern had a really hot core out to 40 yards, so I was confident I could make the shot. I eased up and put the gun rested on the mats. Got the red dot on his head and at that point he had realized something was up and let his feathers down. I didn't give him enough time to think about running and let the 20 gauge roar again. He went down and flopped around a little bit, then he got on his feet and ran 10 feet and dropped stone dead. I was impressed by the little 20 gauge. This bird was a monster, the biggest I have ever shot. 24.5lbs, 9.5", and 1-1/8" spurs. At that point both of my tags were filled and my buddy still had one tag left. We figured we'd save his last tag for Saturday and call it a day. We had a lot of birds to go tag and then clean.
As forecasted, it rained quite good Friday night into Saturday. Friday night we made the decision to sleep in a little bit and let the woods dry out some. We got out on the powerline by 6 am and started glassing and listening. At first we didn't hear anything, surprising. Then we heard one start hammering in the woods off the powerline. We listened for 10 minutes and got a good pin point on him. There was an old woods road that ran off the powerline in the general direction of the bird so we made a play to go in on that and see how close we could get. We went in probably a quarter of mile and he gobbled again, still a few hundred yards to go. We pressed in further and he gobbled once again, pretty close probably 100 yards. We setup quickly and I positioned myself back behind my buddy. I left off a couple soft yelps and the bird went crazy gobbling. I couldn't see the area the bird was coming from, so had to look at my buddy for signals. He told me the bird was coming. The gobbling had stopped and I could see my buddy get the gun up and ready, but no shots for a few minutes. I let off a couple purrs to see if I could get the bird closer. That did him in. My buddy shot him at 35 yards, and again a bang drop event. Not a single flop. My buddy said the bird had hung up at 70 yards and all he could see was his red head through the trees. When I let the purrs off my buddy said that made him close the distance. This bird was a beauty as well. 22lbs, 9.5 beard, and 1-1/8" spurs.
We hunted a total of 5 hours, filled all 4 tags with a bunch of 3-year old birds mostly. Our 4 bird average was 20.5lbs. The biggest takeaway from this season was that less is more when it comes to calling. I called maybe a total of a minute between all 4 birds. Let em know you're there and let them do the magic. You can't beat a good turkey hunt.
Thanks to Mike Yingling and John Sinclair for turning out the killer pots.
