2022 Story Thread

[Yoder409]

Great job, TW !!!!!!

Nice workmanship on the homemade call, too !!!   

[Tom007]

Congrats to all!

[Delmar ODonnell]

Congrats Twyatt! That's awesome. Pok3, sorry to hear that. I will say of all the places I've been. Kansas and Nebraska are my least favorite....by a lot.

I've spent the last 6 days getting my butt kicked in Kentucky. I missed Easter morning, not because of poor marksmanship, but because I made an idiotic, shameful decision and took a terrible shot. I was pretty upset with myself after the fact, luckily I heard him gobble yesterday so he's no worse for wear.

Today was my last day, as I had to leave at 1:00 to meet some buddies in another state. It was a rainy, windy morning, and I heard no roost gobbles. I changed locations, going to a spot I haven't been all week. I saw a large field well back that I thought to check due to the rain. Sure enough, there was a gobbler and 3 hens in the field. I crawled into position, and had my bead on the gobblers head for at least 20 minutes. My rangefinder would not shoot past the brush on the field edge, and after Sunday's Miss, I did not want to take any chances. The gobbler kept moving to my right, and when he got to my 3:00, I knew he was well within range. I yelped to get his head up, and in my awkward position, jerked the shot so bad I don't know if I will ever miss a turkey as badly as I did.

After missing a gift bird at 10:00 on the last day of my trip, I was somewhere between depressed and angry. I knew I was about to have a five hour drive with no turkeys and 2 misses under my belt. I thought about leaving then and calling it, but this year I've really tried to keep a positive attitude and choose to be happy when things just aren't clicking. I decided to give it 3 more hours just for the sake of trying.

I biked another 2 miles to the end of the ridge and half heartedly cut on my trumpet. 2 gobblers answered in the bottom. They did not seem to have the best attitude, so I worked my way down the mountain into the bottom. I luckily saw them from the sharp crest and sat down on them. The flock was at 60 yards and would drift 10-15 yards away, i would yelp, and they would drift back. The last time this happened, I watched the gobblers head change colors and they finally broke. At 12:28 on the last day, I took this fine KY long beard. Redemption makes you forget your low points quickly!

Appalachia is absolutely gorgeous. Them mountain hardwood easterns are something special!




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[POk3s]

Can't say I disagree with you Delmar! Congrats on another fine bird!!

[Yoder409]

Great bird and great pics !!!!!

CONGRATS, again !!!!!   

[zsully]

POK3 sorry about the trip to Kansas. It's a real bummer to have the weather shut the birds down. You just gotta get back on that horse and get after them again.

Delmar!!!!!!!!  That's awesome! Congrats for like the 12th time this year!!!

I'm real pumped to get my oldest son out tomorrow. Hopefully we have an update mid-morning.

[Mossyguy]

Congrats to everyone on the hunts so far this year!

POK...hate to hear about your trip to Kansas. The only time I have been there was a few years ago. The weather felt more like deer season-cold, rainy and windy but we hunted with an outfitter so finding birds wasn't a problem. We drove all day from Mississippi, scouted that evening, tagged out by the next evening, and drove back home the next day.

Congrats on your Kentucky bird Delmar...I lived on Fort Knox for 3 years and they had 3 things up there and they were all huge-bucks, turkeys, and mountains! It was one of my favorite places to hunt!

[Meleagris gallopavo]

2 birds, 2 states, 1 day. 

I'm fortunate enough to have been raised right on the Eastern NC/VA border and me and my family own and have access to private land in both states.  I took full advantage of that today.

My day started out in VA on some turkeys I'd been looking at this week.  Got to my spot and set up, did a little calling and no gobbling on the roost.  About 7:00 AM one fired up on the ground about 200 yards away.  He doesn't respond to my mouth call so I switched to one of my pots.  Bingo!  He started cutting me off and gobbling each time I hit the call.  I gave him the silent treatment a bit, then I hit him again and he's closed the distance to about 75 yards.  I keep hitting him and he's coming in hot.  Once he spots my hen decoy I let him close until about 20 yards and I dust him.  I take him to my nearby commercial fridge at work and go to NC.  I ride around a bit, settle on a place and end up leaving to go grab lunch and take care of some honey-dos.

I go back to the same spot about 3:30 in the afternoon.  This is a turkey infested hole and I knew I'd see one at some point.  This is more like an ambush because they don't gobble in the afternoon around here unless you find one that really wants to die.  I hit the call a little and sat it down and waited.  About 4:30 I see a couple of birds coming to me, but they seem disinterested in the decoys.  About 5:00 I see 2 coming in hot to my left, both longbeards.  They approach the jake decoy with some trepidation and the smaller Tom backs off.  The larger Tom got a little closer but turned away like he was gonna go so I popped him. 

These birds did not score better than my previous 2, but one had a pretty healthy double beard.  One tag left and that's in VA.

On the way back to the truck I saw the bigger dominant Tom with 2 hens.  That bird was something!


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[zsully]

Pennsylvania Youth Day Success

Yesterday was the Pennsylvania youth turkey day. I've spent every morning this past week scouting before work and Thursday and Friday after work. During the evening scouting trips the boys learned about private property and permissions. They asked for permission to hunt three different properties and all three farms granted permission to hunt. So we picked what we thought was the best starting point for Saturday and a_jabbo and I took my oldest. The morning broke clear with high pressure......perfect gobbling weather......except the birds didn't cooperate. I think we heard a grand total of 3 gobbles from the roost and there wasn't anything close. After fly down a pair of gobblers lit up and there was no doubt that we picked the wrong side of the road to hunt. Around 8:00 those birds had gone silent and Easton was getting impatient. So we made the decision to pull everything down and move to another farm down the road. We get set back up in a new spot about 8:15 and things were pretty quiet for the next hour but about 9:30 there was a gobble down over the hill from our set up. A_jabbo started laying it on pretty thick with the cutting and yelping and these birds were really fired up and there is no doubt these birds are coming. At one point I thought the calling may have been a little too much and I may have telepathically wished A_jabbo would swallow that dang call. Regardless of my thoughts about "over calling" the birds were eating it up and coming hard and fast. When they broke the field the bigger bird went into full strut and worked right to the Jake decoy at 20 yards. At that point Easton showed great patience waiting for the second bird to clear the strutter and squeezed off a shot. When that little 410 barked the bird flipped over backwards and never flopped. Then the excitement and shakies set in. He's still floating on cloud nine and was telling everyone at our family get together about how he killed a giant longbeard. It really gets me fired up watching Easton fall in love with turkey hunting. I owe Adam a huge thanks for all the calling but more importantly being half a pack mule with all the gear we carry to make it happen.

[Meleagris gallopavo]

Well done!  Congratulations!


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[Yoder409]

CONGRATS to the young man !!!!!!!!!

[harleytom]

Congratulations! Great job by all involved.


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[twyatt]

Congrats again bro! I know Easton is pumped, and I know the work you and AJab put in to make it happen.  Great job all around!  Congrats again Delmar and MG!  Looks like this team is on fire, with more seasons getting ready to start up north.

On another note - I scored yesterday on a quick morning hunt.  Got set up early on the same field my daughter shot her bird in.  Heard a few gobbles across from me up on the ridge about 200 yards away, and another bird gobbling like crazy but a LONG ways off, back up the hollow beyond where I had parked.  This far bird gobbled at everything, crows, me, the other gobbler on the ridge, he was fired up, but again he was a good ways off, and what I thought was too far away to want to play at the time.  Right at first light a jake pitches out of a tree and lands right behind me, walks around me at about 5 yards, and across the field I'm sitting in, making all kinds of racket when he sees the jake decoy.  The gobbler on the ridge starts gobbling back at the jake, and for a brief moment, I thought he was coming off the ridge, but the jake crosses the field, crosses the creek, and walks up the ridge towards the gobbler, and I only hear them gobble together once more, then all goes quiet.  I sit for a few minutes, call a little, and hear nothing. Well now the cows start coming into the field I'm in.  Wonderful.  A few cows feed by me, and the remaining 50 or so cows are spread out all around the field now. I hit the wingbone pretty hard, and with no response I decide that there's no way anything is coming into this field now, so I start packing up and go to pick up my decoys, thinking I'll go wander around and see if I can find that other bird way back up the hollow.  Well I make it about halfway to my decoys, and I hear GOBBLE, and he's CLOSE.     Oh crap! I turn around and almost dive back to my chair and try to get set up fast.  That bird gobbled so close I don't know how he didn't see me, but about the time I turn around and get settled into my chair, I see 2 gobblers come into the field.   They stare in my direction for a while, feed a little, walk a little, and I'm still thinking, there's now way those birds are going to navigate around 50 cows and come over here, but that's exactly what they did.  They literally slowly weaved in and out of all of those cows, and got to about 20 yards from the decoys, and then sprinted the rest of the way in, and one proceeded to start pounding my jake.  Finally one stood still long enough for me to get a shot, and fortunately I had a huge gap with no cows in my line of fire whatsover.   
He's not an upgrade, so I didn't post it.  He had a 9" beard, 1" and 1 1/8" spurs, but only weighed 16.75lbs.  Definitely the lightest bird I've ever shot.  It was a beautiful morning and an awesome hunt.  Very fortunate he gobbled when he did, or I'd have surely been busted.

[Tom007]

Fantastic job, congrats.........

[Yoder409]

Way to go, TW !!!!!!!!!!