GobbleNut's 2023 Season Hunt Log

[crow]

Well at least no cars were harmed in the making of this hunt.

[GobbleNut]

April 15th continued (afternoon hunt):  After recounting tales of the morning failures, I headed up the canyon above the cabin with a buddy late in the afternoon a couple of hours before dark.  Getting no responses to calling after walking for about three-quarters of a mile, we sat down on a point above a spring hoping to hear gobbles before dark or to eventually get a response.  In this country, the wind is invariably up in the afternoon as was the case here.  Soon, both of us were nodding off,...with me being just lucid enough to sit up and call every five to ten minutes, hoping for a distant response of any sort. 

We had been sitting/laying there repeating that process for about forty-five minutes when I noticed the winds suddenly calmed down.  I sat up, looked at my buddy, and said to him,..."the winds are calming down nicely, Tom" in anticipation of being able to hear gobbles at dark, which was still an hour away. 

Glancing down the hill after my comment, I was surprised (shocked is a better description) to see a gobbler standing there looking around at about 45 yards!  In our natural "state of unreadiness", both of our guns were leaning against a tree,...which was irrelevant as the gobbler immediately turned and departed hastily away from us, and causing us to look at each other with the expected expression of disbelief.  Around these parts, gobblers just don't show up "out of the blue" without "saying something".

Cold and discouraged by the event, we gathered our stuff and headed back to the cabin for a consoling beverage to make us feel better about the whole affair. (...It didn't work...)   

Parting note:  In a recent thread about silent gobblers showing up unannounced, I proclaimed that I had never had that happen in 55 years of hunting them.  Well, suffice it to say that I can no longer make that claim!   

[zelmo1]

We all relax at the wrong time bro, you will get him. Z

[Tom007]

Keep at em Jim, you will nail him!

[JeffC]

So at least you know you are still able to call one up! Gives the Tom and few more days to keep growing his spurs and beard..Good luck Jim

[crow]

Well at least your out there.
The part that surprised me most was that you had 5-10 strait minuets of being lucid

[GobbleNut]

April 16th (Sunday):  Plans are made for two of us to head for a known roosting area two miles from the cabin.  It is high on a ridge with the approach requiring the use of a faint trail to get up to it.  Unfortunately, in the dark the two of us cannot find the trail, spending considerable precious minutes looking for it.  Time is of the essence, but we eventually give up and resign ourselves to either ascending the ridge by another, more precarious route,...or going elsewhere.  Being the age we are, we decide that "going elsewhere" is the preferred choice. 

We drive on down the road with the intention of "locating" a gobbler.  After discussion, we choose an area that we suspect might not have been "spoiled" by the hoards of hunters roaming the woods.  Soon we have found two gobblers.  However, they are on a ridge across a very deep canyon with very, very steep slopes both going down and then back up to where the gobblers are roosted.  Sanity wins out and we decide to try to find an alternative route to perhaps approach these birds, but after considering all alternatives, we decide against trying to get there.

Instead, we decide to just see if these gobblers will come to us across the chasm between us.  Calling to them, one is quite willing to chat with us.  He answers every call lustily but after a while it becomes apparent that he wants us to come to him rather than the other way around.  As such, we are at a stalemate.  He is hot enough that we both agree he is killable,...but we both agree, too, that we might kill ourselves trying to get to him.  Lamenting to ourselves that there was a time in our lives when we would have eagerly made the effort to kill these gobblers, we both concur that that time has passed,...which is a real bummer, but a reality, nonetheless.   

For a while longer, we search for more birds, but eventually head back towards the cabin.  Driving in, there is a gate we have to go through.  The gate squeaks loudly when opened, and when my buddy opens it, a gobbler sounds off up the ridge where we had intended to go in the beginning when we couldn't find the trail. 

This time sanity does not prevail,...and we decide to ascend the ridge to this gobbler.  It is a long and steep S.O.B., but after many periods of stopping to catch our breath, we reach the top.  Calling gets an immediate response from a pair of gobblers about three hundred yards down the ridge. 

I could go into great (and lengthy) detail about what happened in the next hour and a half with these gobblers, but suffice it to say we moved several times, eventually pulled them within probably fifty yards of us, and had them there for nearly an hour, but they would not come over the last little rise between us no matter what we tried,...which was just about every trick I know of (I suppose I need to learn more tricks). 

We finally decided to move forward ourselves after they quit responding and it was apparent they had either left or had just shut up.  It turns out they had just decided to lay down right there out of sight from us in that we eased up to look over the edge and they jumped up, putted, and flew off.  More patience on our part might have changed the outcome,...but who knows for sure?...

That was it for my first NM hunt.  Headed out again in the morning (19th) for a couple of days. ...Plan on "getting serious" about killin' one now!  We'll have to see how that works out...   

[GobbleNut]

Thanks for the votes of confidence, fellers!  You've apparently got more faith in my abilities than I do!...   

Well at least your out there.
The part that surprised me most was that you had 5-10 strait minuets of being lucid

Well, I might have been exaggerating a bit...  I have reached the age where "lucidity" is a relative term...   

[crow]

 

[GobbleNut]

Wednesday, April 19:  Leave the house at 3:30 a.m. to get to listening spot at first hint of daylight.  As anticipated, I hear multiple gobblers several hundred yards into private property where I can't hunt,...and zero gobblers on the public stuff I can.  Move to fenceline on private boundary and call to gobblers hoping to draw them across.  No dice, although a few seemed interested for a while, responding well and coming about half way before fading back further into the private stuff.  ...Must have said something wrong in the conversation...   

Head back to truck and then move along trail hoping to strike a gobbler on the public side.  Finally strike a gobbler across a deep canyon on opposite ridge.  He is the only game in town, so I make a big loop to get on the same ridge.  In the time it takes to get there, the wind goes from "moderately irritating" to "slightly below hurricane" level.  Not good.

I ease along the ridge, calling off into the canyons on either side hoping for a response.  I work down the ridge a few hundred yards to where it drops off steeply into the canyon below without getting any response (or at least none that I can hear over the roar of the wind through the pines), and decide to turn back rather than drop off.  Walking back along the ridge, I walk over a slight rise,...and there is the gobbler, apparently working his way up to where I had called a few minutes earlier.  Busted! (if only he had let me know he was around,...but then again, maybe he did and I didn't hear him over the wind). 

Nothing interesting the rest of the day,...except increasing wind velocity through nightfall. 

[GobbleNut]

Thursday, April 20th:  Wake up to the sound of dreaded wind, which has continued through the night as a cold front has moved through.  At daylight, I  hear a few very distant gobbles on the private side again,...and again, none on the public side.  I drop down to the fenceline and again try my hand at pulling a gobbler my way,...but they are uncharacteristically quiet and unresponsive.  It seems the cold front has shut them down.

Back to the truck I go, but notice that the wind is subsiding.  Suddenly it is almost dead calm as the front has apparently moved through.  I am encouraged and start covering ground, walking out a new ridge calling off both sides.  Nothing.  I decide to drive to another series of ridges and canyons and continue covering country and calling.  Again nothing.

I am pretty discouraged from the lack of any responses, but with it being calm, I decide to go back to the general area I had seen the gobbler on the public side and give it another go.  At one stop, I cutt and yelp loudly, hoping to get any kind of response.  Suddenly, I hear a distant "maybe-that-was-a-gobble" from far down the ridge I am on.  I figure I will find out for sure if I move a bit closer, so I head towards the phantom sound.  I stop and call again.  Nothing.  Call again, and again no response.  Maybe it wasn't a gobble after all,...my ears playing tricks on me.  I return to the spot I first thought I had heard the gobble and call again.  This time, a definite clear gobble rings out,...far away, but definitely a gobble!

Again, I head towards the sound, this time certain that I have found a bird to work!  He is half-a-mile away, so I walk down the ridge towards him, stopping every hundred yards or so to call, see if he answers, and assess whether I should try to get closer or set up.  As I walk towards him, he is answering almost every call now, but has set up shop on a higher part of the ridge ahead of me. 

I ease up as far as I dare, figuring I am maybe 150-200 yards from him.  The area is fairly open with a smattering of pines and juniper of various sizes between me and the gobbler.  In addition, the sun is up and filtering through the pines, creating a slight issue with an appropriate set-up.  Sizing things up, I make the decision to sit behind a flimsy, small pine tree that will break up my outline while at the same time allowing adequate ability to maneuver to shoot,...and in the shade of a larger pine. 

I get things situated,...and call again.  And again, he answers from the same spot.  For the next thirty minutes the scenario is the same,...I call, he answers from the same distance away, although sometimes moving right or left between responses,...but never closer or further. 

I suspect we have all been here before,...a gobbler that it definitely interested, but will not approach any closer for whatever reason.  In my experience, most often these gobblers have eventually tired of the game and either moved off gobbling, or just shut up and disappeared,...which is exactly what I figure is about to happen here.  Running through my options, I finally decide on the "turn away and call softly to make him think the hen is leaving" strategy.  Amazingly, it works this time!

It takes a few minutes in which I call away a few times, each time softer to give the illusion of a hen getting further away from the gobbler.  Then suddenly, the next gobble is closer!  He is coming!  I peer intently in his direction, hoping to catch a glimpse.  Then,...there he is!...sneaking down the ridge coming straight for me!  Eighty yards,...then seventy,...sixty.  Now I am looking for my options in getting ready for the shot.  He goes behind a couple of big pines,...gun up.  Coming on,...fifty yards,...forty yards.  The moment of truth!  In that moment, I am reliving the gobbler I had missed the last time I had pulled the trigger,...and under similar circumstances.

He steps out into an opening at thirty-seven yards.  I focus on the shot,...head down on the stock,...beads aligned.  Then...Boom!  The deal is done! He is down,...flopping!  I head towards him as quickly as my old bones will get me there, latch on, and pin him down,...and breathe a sigh of relief.

2023 New Mexico gobbler #1 is in the bag!  I am a bit surprised that he is a two-year-old, thinking he might be an older bird due to his antics, but it makes no difference.  I am delighted,...and quite frankly, astonished that I have succeeded in killing this bird when just a couple of hours before I had been utterly dejected and ready to bag the hunt.  In spring gobbler hunting, you just never know....   

[Happy]

Congrats, Jim!
I'm glad you hit this one. It pays off to be a persistent  GOAT. These fellers ain't figured out what they are dealing with, but eventually, they will figure it out. We just lit the pilot light on this oven. Wait till we start turning the gas up.

[zelmo1]

Congrats Jim

[JeffC]

Congrats Jim, great read, way to stay after them.
Hapless the only gas your smelling is coming from your teammate, Reject ate some bad food..

[randy6471]

  Way to stay after 'em Jim!! Great story...Congrats!!!