Anyone Have One Bird That Haunts You

[justin.arps]

2nd bird, I took my son hunting and he was first up to shoot. We went in A river bottom area that's always productive. We had 4 toms hammering on the roost, long story short birds worked away but were still gobbling their heads off. My son decides to move on the bird behind us and I told him he should wait, this bird was 250yds from us on the roost and gained 125 yds on us already. Him knowing best crawls off and gets below the ridge this bird is on and is trying to flank him and get re set up on him. I elected to hang tight and let it play out. No more than 6 minutes from the time he crawled off I had the Tom 21yds full strut. Boom patience kills em. That's his torment bird, he's always picking the beard up and shakes his head. He took A bird 45 minutes later after we re grouped.


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[Greg Massey]

They all haunt me till my tag is on their leg?

x2 ... I don't try to put names on them, i just try to kill gobblers. As you get older, name calling goes away. LOL

[Cut N Run]

I've got one under my skin right now.  He's got a favored roost and strut zones on land adjacent to land I have rights to hunt.  He lets anything within earshot know that he's the man.  Then he flies down farther away from the property line where he gobbles & stays in the first strut zone...for hours.  Next, he drifts over to his next strut zone (still farther away), where he also hangs out and gobbles for hours.  He either gets tired of strutting or breeding all the hens, loops farther away.  He seems to know where the property line is and he respects it.  So do I.  I'm sure that I've never heard him on my side of the line.  I have scouted every inch along the property boundary and have dragged a few downed treetops up beside bigger trees for cover to help break up my outline.  He gives me courtesy gobbles to let me know he hears me, but won't be moving any closer than he already is.  I have even recruited a couple of my buddies to set up 40 yards behind my side of the line and call, so we sound like several hens.  I've tried gobble calls, clucks only, leaf scratching only, had a caller set up behind me moving back & forth side to side.  Nothing.  I've hunted rain, fog, morning, afternoon, & dusk trying to get him to make the fatal mistake, but he won't bite.  All I've ever heard is hens going to him.

I'm not at my wit's end yet.  He won't break me, though he sure is trying.

Jim

[WTNUT]

I can't say my haunting friend of a bird had a beard like the ones above or the spurs.   He was certainly dang old with great spurs and beard,  but he did drive me crazy.  I didn't kill him,  and hunted him nearly every day of the season two or three years ago.  I can't even write about him to be honest.   No matter what I did he was a step ahead of me.   38 years chasing birds and I have never seen one like him.  Even now,  I don't even like thinking about him.   It was a  every day I chased him. 

[ManfromGreenSwamp]

I've got one under my skin right now.  He's got a favored roost and strut zones on land adjacent to land I have rights to hunt.  He lets anything within earshot know that he's the man.  Then he flies down farther away from the property line where he gobbles & stays in the first strut zone...for hours.  Next, he drifts over to his next strut zone (still farther away), where he also hangs out and gobbles for hours.  He either gets tired of strutting or breeding all the hens, loops farther away.  He seems to know where the property line is and he respects it.  So do I.  I'm sure that I've never heard him on my side of the line.  I have scouted every inch along the property boundary and have dragged a few downed treetops up beside bigger trees for cover to help break up my outline.  He gives me courtesy gobbles to let me know he hears me, but won't be moving any closer than he already is.  I have even recruited a couple of my buddies to set up 40 yards behind my side of the line and call, so we sound like several hens.  I've tried gobble calls, clucks only, leaf scratching only, had a caller set up behind me moving back & forth side to side.  Nothing.  I've hunted rain, fog, morning, afternoon, & dusk trying to get him to make the fatal mistake, but he won't bite.  All I've ever heard is hens going to him.

I'm not at my wit's end yet.  He won't break me, though he sure is trying.

Jim

Jim,
Have you tried evening hunting him, catching him before the fly up on your side? Sounds like that might be the tactic that's needed!!
Hope you get him, and then everyone within earshot will know who the real boss is;)


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[ManfromGreenSwamp]

All the birds that haunt me have been dead for many, many moons. BUT they definitely have ghosts...

I just take my anger out on all the rest moving forward. Attempting to never make those mistakes again.


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[GobbleNut]

The only gobblers that haunt me are ones that got away that shouldn't have.  There have been a few of them over the years, but this is the most recent one in my memory, so I will relate the story about him.  (this'll take a while, so those without patience, feel free to move on...   )

Three seasons ago, a friend and I decided to hop over to Colorado after our Utah hunt and hunt there for a couple of days before heading back home to New Mexico.  The first day, we covered a bunch of public ground and near dark that evening, we located two or three gobblers in a giant, wide canyon.  One was up high on a very steep ridge above the wide-open canyon bottom that was about a quarter mile wide and had a pretty good size creek/river running through it.  Across the bottom on the opposite side was another high ridge, and although we weren't certain, it sounded like two gobblers went to roost on that side.

The next morning, I decided to climb the ridge where the single gobbler was.  He was high up and, did I mention the ridge was STEEP, so well before daylight I started the climb in the dark, wanting to be in his general vicinity by daylight.  As the eastern horizon began to glow, I had made it into the area I thought he would be roosted. 

Waiting to hear him gobble, I sat and listened as the day started to come alive.  Soon, I could hear at least two gobblers across the open valley and on the opposite slope.  I expected the gobbler near me to start up at any moment, but as it grew lighter and lighter, and with the gobblers across the valley really whoopin' it up by now, there was nothing but silence on my side. 

I contemplated bailing off the ridge, crossing the valley, and heading towards the other birds, but it was apparent that I would have to cross in plain sight of those birds with the sun on the verge of rising.  So I sat and listened, hoping against hope that the gobbler I thought was within earshot on my ridge would tell me where he was. 

The sun came up, the gobblers across the canyon flew down, still gobbling regularly,...and on my side,...Nada. 
By now, I had been calling a bit trying to pull a gobble out of anything on my side, and I finally made the decision that my only course of action was to try to get the attention of one of the gobblers across the valley and see what would happen. 

I began with some really loud yelping,...as Merriam's hens are prone to do.  After a couple of series, one or two of the gobblers responded.  I wasn't totally surprised at that, but was still pretty pessimistic about any one of them coming across that wide, open valley, crossing the river, and climbing the,....did I mention VERY STEEP,...ridge I was on. 

After several exchanges of me calling and the gobblers answering from afar, it became apparent that one of them was moving up the tree-line along the valley and was sounding a bit closer.  Over the next half hour, we had a lively conversation as the gobbles steadily grew clearer, and soon I could tell he was directly across the valley from me, but still probably 400 yards away. 

At this point, I was still thinking,..."There is no way in hell that gobbler is coming across that wide open valley, flying across that river, and then coming 300 yards up this STEEP ridge I'm on to get to me."  Boy was I wrong!  I couldn't see the valley because of my position on the hillside, but before long there was no doubt that he had crossed the bottom, flown the river, and was getting closer with every calling exchange. 

He reached the point where I was sure he was in the bottom directly below me, and it was about that time that I made the mental note that,..."Boy, this is about as bad a spot for a turkey set-up that you could possibly have chosen.  Ain't no way he's coming to this spot!"  Again, boy was I wrong!

Did I mention the hillside was VERY, VERY STEEP?  In fact, it was so steep that I had to literally dig my heels into the dirt in front of me to keep from sliding down the slope.  It was about this time that I became quite sure the gobbler had made up his mind to come right on up there to where I was at to take a look, so I dug my heels in, got my gun up on my knee as best I could, and waited.

It wasn't all that long until I could see him angling back and forth up the hill, in full strut, coming right at me.  I saw him at about 100 yards out and he was on a steady march straight up the hill at me.  I said to myself,...Man, this is gonna be a gimmee!"  Have I said "boy, was I wrong enough"?  He got to about sixty yards out, and the old trigger finger was beginning to itch a might, when suddenly he turned to his left and strutted behind a teeny tiny little rise in the slope, putting him just out of my sight. 

By now, his drumming was deafening, so I knew exactly where he was as he walked up the slope behind the teeny tiny little rise just out of sight about thirty yards to my right.  I followed the drumming with my gun barrel as he marched up the slope,...all the while getting me more and more into the dreaded "pretzel shooting position" all of us have probably found ourselves in at one point or another. 

Soon he had made his way to a point just above me, and then started to walk directly towards me.  By now I was straining mightily to swing the gun around far enough to point in his direction,...and then, there he was at twelve yards (I know because I paced it off afterward), in the wide open, in half strut, looking down at me. 

It was one of those times when a guy says to himself,..."This is over. I can't possibly miss him at this range regardless of whether I am knotted-up like a six foot snake that just got run over by an 18-wheeler" so I put the beads on his head and pulled the trigger.  ...Apparently, it was quite possible for me to miss him!

At the shot, I heard what I thought was a half-gobble, saw a flurry of wings beating,...and then nothing.  Convinced He was laying stone-cold dead where he had been standing, I untangled myself, stood up, got my balance as best I could,...and walked confidently up to where he was surely going to be laying. 

About halfway through that long, twelve-yard walk, I became an itsy bitsy bit concerned about the fact that i could not see a turkey laying there,...nor was there any turkey floppage going on anywhere in that general vicinity.  A visual inspection of the location the gobbler had tried to sacrifice himself from confirmed that nary a feather was to be found to even give me the slightest hope that my shot had been in the general vicinity of the gobbler's person. 

I could go on for a while about the verbal flogging I gave myself over the next,..oh, I would say,...last three years, but by now, I think you probably get the picture....   

[Dtrkyman]

Every single one I didn't get, haha.  They only haunt me for a small amount of time though.  On to the next! 

I had a brief shot at one in Indy last year, gave me a glimpse through some thick briars and just as I figured out it was him he was gone. Did not kill a bird on that trip, only hunt I blanked on in 2 years!

[Gobble!]

All the misses come to mind. This one was extra salty.

[guesswho]

All the misses come to mind. This one was extra salty.

Nice pattern though!   Just a tad low?    Not laughing at you, hopefully laughing with you.

[Gobble!]

Nice pattern though!   Just a tad low?    Not laughing at you, hopefully laughing with you.

At 3' the patterns pretty tiiiight. Can't do anything but laugh.

[notsure]

In 2005, it was difficult to obtain a shotgun-season Spring Turkey tag in MN. You needed at least three points to have a realistic chance at drawing one in the state lottery, unless you were a land owner. But, anyone who applied unsuccessfully for a tag could purchase an OTC archery license good for the last two weeks of May (Season's G & H back then). Well, I'd never killed a turkey at that time, but not for the lack of opportunities. In fact, on the fateful day in question, I missed a gobbler that flew in right off the roost. Thinking that something might be wrong with my bow, I shot a second arrow (I only brought three) at a leaf at what I judged to be 20 yards away. Turned out nothing was wrong with my bow, but my range estimation was way off. I had set my 20 yard pin on a bird 30 yards away. Well, at least I had one arrow left and it was only around 7 AM at the time. Ten AM rolls around and I'm just about ready to pack it in when all of a sudden a gobbler sounds off no more than 10 yards to my right. Out from the wooded rail bed below which I had setup my blind comes a strutter in all his magical glory! He literally acted "just like they do in the videos" and started displaying for the hen decoy I placed around ten paces in front of the blind. So, after composing myself the best I could, I drew back, placed the 20 yard pin a bit below his thigh and released the arrow....but not before the chair I was sitting on decided to break, sending me to the dirt and the arrow sailing off through the roof of the blind and into wild blue yonder. And the darned bird didn't even flinch. He just continued courting his plastic mistress, while I sat there watching the whole show sans a single arrow! I think I cried a little bit.

[Paulmyr]

1st one I ever shot at. Rolled him over and he got up and flew away. I can still see that crimson head like it was yesterday.