GobbleNut Hunt Log 2024

[eggshell]

Great hunt JIm, congrats

[TauntoHawk]

Thanks for taking us along, I have a month til my hunting starts the stories of epic gobbling mornings sure help.

Sent from my Pixel 7 Pro using Tapatalk

[3seasons]

Congratulations on a heck of a hunt. Sounds like one you won't soon forget.  Some places are just a special kind of special.

[GobbleNut]

Thanks for all the kind words, everyone.  I hope to have more hunts like that to share this spring!...   

[avidnwoutdoorsman]

Congrats Jim. Sounds like a great hunt. I'm glad you stuck through with this hunt. I'm also glad that your misfortune brought you such a beautiful morning.

Way to go!!!

[reflexl]

Great read Jim. I am getting caught up enough to read the logs. Absolutely buried in paper at the moment.

[randy6471]

Congrats Jim and thanks for sharing with us!! Sounds like a great hunt and it ended with a trophy!! Awesome!!

[YoungGobbler]

Good job Jim! It was a good story to read and it must have been an amazing hunt!  Of course I wish you or few mores if possible! 

[GobbleNut]

Monday, April 15th (NM opening day): 
With plans made for an extended hunt towards the end of the week but still wanting to get out for the opener, I am torn between making a run to my familiar Merriam's country or to try a new hunt for a Rio in an area I had never hunted before.  The decision to go the Rio route is made when the weather forecast called for possible 60 mph winds by mid-day in the mountains.

Knowing I might do this, I had taken a day the previous week to take a look at the area I suspected I might find a Rio gobbler.  This is flat "river-bottom" habitat and as luck would have it, I did find a single spot that had a few turkey tracks and actually saw a gobbler.  Problem is, he (and some jakes) were on the far side of a river that is not wadable (at least not by me). The solution is that I have a small johnboat.  The other problem is that there was only one spot I identified that I could get the boat into the river and go across.  My plan is hatched to take the boat to cross the river if the gobbler is roosting on the far side.

At 0-dark-thirty opening morning, I am sitting at the spot where I can cross, waiting for daylight and with hopes of hearing gobbles at some point.  The skies begin to lighten.  No gobbles...but also no other hunters showing up...which was one of my major concerns hunting here on public land, as well as never having been here before during the season. At one point, I think I might hear a faint, distant gobble far to the south, and after a few minutes, I decide to jump in the truck and drive down the road a ways to get closer. 

I have driven less than a quarter mile when I suddenly see a human figure walking up the road towards me in the hazy, low-light level of the coming dawn.  I pull up and roll down the window.  It is an older fellow who is turkey hunting (arghh!)...and he is obviously aware that there are turkeys nearby...and, although I am here first, he plans on setting up right near the only spot I can reasonably cross the river in my boat.  Had I just stayed put for another five minutes, there would be no issue, but now, as I explain that I plan to park and launch the boat at that location, he is not deterred and eventually walks on up towards that location, which leaves ME in a quandary as to how to approach this new development. 

I still have not heard a "for sure" gobble anyway, so I continue on down the road a couple of hundred yards and stop to listen.  I have no sooner stepped out of the truck when directly across the river from me, a loud gobble rings out!  The gobbler is right where I figured he would be...but now I have no place to launch the boat due to the other hunter.  Considering the circumstances, I figure my best hope is to try to call the gobbler across the seventy-yard-wide river to me.

To shorten this segment, my attempts to get the gobbler to fly the river are unsuccessful over a two-hour period, although from his gobbling at my calling, he was marching back and forth on the far side of the river at least thinking about it.  The dense brush along the riverbank prevented either one of us from being able to see each other.  All the while, I am sitting there thinking,..."if only I could get over there to him". (At one point, I did have a couple of jakes show up out of nowhere and hang around a while).

Eventually, I heard another gobbler further south, also on the other side of the river, but he was also an "unwilling flier".  I finally found a spot to put the boat in and go across, but it took a while, and by the time I succeeded in getting on his side, he had either lost interest or moved out of earshot and I couldn't relocate him.  In addition, the anticipated wind had by now made its arrival, making any further hopes of finding him, or any other gobbler, an exercise in futility, so a little before noon, I bagged it and headed home.

...After all, it was the first day of the season here...there is no hurry...   

[Happy]

I beginning to suspect that our leader used his superior wit and intellect to trade our fully outfitted USS GOAT tactical gobbler destroyer, complete with radar, GPS, satellite communications, twin 20mm cannons with optional heat seaking cababilities, and a snack bar for a rinky-dink johnboat. I am guessing our membership dues are about to go drastically up.

Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

[eggshell]

Yeah Happy, I hope he didn't fall for that old line, "some little old lady had it sitting in the barn for 20 years, it only has been used twice".

It's too bad you didn't find a crossing, Jim. One area in Ky we hunt is transected by a river, I never go down there without one of my two river boats. i have a short jon boat and a semi V depending on how high the river is. There have been quite a few gobblers taken a ride in that jon boat in 39 years of hunting that area. Better lick on the next trip.

[GobbleNut]

Headed out again tomorrow (17th) for four or five days in the NM mountains.  If I don't have something to show at the end of this particular outing, I will turn in my turkey hunting credentials to the OG authorities and slink away in shame , possibly to never be heard from again around here (which admittedly would probably just tickle a few folks pink). 
...Hopefully the above declaration does not end up fitting into the category of "famous last words"...   

...Will report back in a few days.  Don't let the johnboat sink while I'm gone...   

[Happy]

Good luck Cap'n. Have fun, be safe, and shoot straight

Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

[JeffC]

Wish you safe and successful hunting GN!

[Tom007]

Thursday, March 28th: Arrive at pre-determined parking spot an hour and a half before sunrise.  Opening the truck door, I immediately hear multiple gobbling turkeys off in the distance.  Apparently, the full moon has them fooled into thinking it's time to start up.  I quickly gather my gear and head up towards the closest birds which sound like they are a quarter-mile away.  The moon light makes walking easy and I am soon "in amongst them" with several gobblers sounding off close by...and also far away. 

I am thinking that the closer birds to the road might have been messed with in the previous days so I decide to go further in towards the birds that are more distant from the road.  I can hear what sounds like several gobblers either together or close by each other that are another half-mile away and make the decision to go to them.  It is still quite early when I top onto the ridge these birds are just over the back side of, and I quietly move in and set up close to what sounds like three gobblers in the trees roughly eighty yards down the slope from me and at least three more a hundred yards off to my left. Conditions are such that I have a screen of trees between me and them and I cannot see any of them in the trees...which is the situation I prefer. 

I get settled in with a good line of sight both right and left, but with a smallish bush in front of me that will give me the option of moving a bit if I need to adjust.  I wait.  In the next half hour, it gradually eases towards daylight and fly-down.  In that half-hour, I am treated to a "sound spectacular" that, if he is lucky, a turkey hunter gets to experience only a few times in his life.  There is gobbling coming from all directions, both near and far.  I sit there trying to estimate how many gobblers I can hear from this spot, and finally settle for a number in the 25-30 range coming from a dozen different locations within a half-mile radius.  Whether I kill a gobbler this morning or not, just being here to experience this is enough.

Soon it is light enough that, besides the gobbling, I am starting to hear tree yelping coming from birds to the left...and from several different locations.  Hens,...competition.  Although I want to let the gobblers know another hen (me) is here, I hold off impatiently,...but enjoying the show.  About when expected, the birds to the left start hitting the ground and gathering.  Besides gobbling and drumming, I can hear the normal morning assembly routine that a mixed spring flock of birds has...yelping, aggressive purring, some excited clucking and cutting...all signs that they are trying to sort things out for the morning. 

In the meantime, the three gobblers that are in front of me continue to gobbler...and without any other turkey "noises" coming from the area...and they remain in their roost trees.  I am expecting at any moment for them to fly out towards the other birds, but they do not.  Finally, I decide I need to coax them to come my way rather than head towards the others, so I make an admittedly-feeble, dry-mouth attempt at some soft yelps with a mouth call that sound roughly similar to a turkey.  Remarkably, they gobble back at it. 

I am not at all happy with my initial attempt and, blaming the call rather than my skill, I quickly switch to a raspier mouth call which I think will sound closer to what the birds on the ground to the left are doing.  Again I call...and with the results being a bit raspier, but not all that much better.  By now, I am saying to myself,..."Boy, you are really making a mess of this",...but surprisingly, the gobblers again gobble back lustily at my calls. 

By now, I am thinking that I really can't screw this up any worse, so I call again,...this time sounding somewhat like a turkey.  The gobblers gobble...and within seconds I hear wing beats as one bird flies down to the right...away from the main flock on the ground.  Then more wing beats as both of the other gobblers sail to the ground just out of sight down the slope to the right. 

At this point, I have had my gun and body positioned towards the main flock on the left thinking any potential action would come from that direction.  My choice to sit behind the small bush in front of me proves to be a wise one as I am able to swing my body and gun around to the right side without the risk of being seen.  I have no sooner got my body and gun into position when I see a strutting gobbler working his way up the hill, then a second,...and a third.  All three gobblers are coming right in! 

They head up the slope towards me in full strut and I quickly confirm that all three are mature gobblers...and have "deduced" that they are likely a trio of gullible two-year-olds...some of my favorites.   At twenty-five yards, the first one moves through a small opening towards a larger opening that I have my shotgun focused on.  He goes behind the last tree before entering the clearing.  I am thinking this is about to be all over with, but he stops and apparently is surveying the area he expects the hen to be.  The other two gobblers follow suit...walking through the smaller opening and also get behind the tree.  They stand there hesitating, and showing some concern that there is no hen where she should be.  One of them walks back through the smaller opening going back towards where they came from, and I immediately realize I need to swing the gun to that opening and wait for the next gobbler to come through...which I do.

I am on the opening when the second gobbler walks out.  Obligingly, he hesitates just long enough for me to identify a good beard and get a solid bead on his head.  At the shot, he is down and flopping!  There is no doubt about the shot, but I get to my feet as quickly as my old, achy bones will let me and slow-walk my way over to him, but in the meantime, he has flopped in quite a big area in his head-shot throes (important fact to know for my concluding comments below).

Now, the following paragraph is of relative unimportance other than for the OG contest and the fact that I normally can't contribute much more than a lower-50-point bird because of where I usually hunt, but I want to make it clear that this gobbler might have raised my status as a GOAT (if that is even possible) if not for the following detail:
I get to him and manage to subdue his floppage, and in a few more moments he is still.  Picking him up, the first thing I notice is that he is big and heavy (21.75 lbs) for the typical gobbler from this type terrain.  I glance at his beard and it is also thick and long (again, for the subspecies and area...10.25") .  Finally, I grab the legs to check the spurs.  The right spur is a dandy, again for this subspecies and area,...sharp, curved, and a solid 1-1/4" long.  Looking at the left, the spur cap is gone!!...and there is an obviously just-exposed bloody spur core.  In his flopping around after the shot, he has knocked off the spur cap on his left leg, and although I spend a considerable amount of time searching the "flop site" for it, the spur cap is unrecovered.  Bottom line is that I have tagged one of the highest scoring Merriam's gobblers (maybe THE highest scoring) I have ever killed and he flopped one spur cap off!   Big Bummer! 

Oh well, a guy should not be crying over a missing spur when that guy truly had one of his most memorable hunts ever!   



(sorry for the crappy pictures...conditions were not good for picture taking and my camera decided to go on the blink after the first couple of attempts)

Way too Go Jim! Nice bird, congrats!