Friday, May 17th: The rainy weather has cleared, but the fog has stuck around. Nevertheless, we are parked at a gate into the property well before daylight. Gathering our gear, we head in, my friends heading towards the roost location and me going the opposite direction towards a long, open ridge that parallels some great looking roosting habitat. I will be able to easily walk the ridge, listening for gobbling on the timber-covered slopes below.
Standing at a high point at first light, through the fog, I begin to hear gobbling from the birds that my friends are setting up on a quarter-mile away. I mentally wish them luck and slowly begin to work my way away from them down the ridge in the opposite direction, anticipating hearing additional gobblers sounding off at any moment.
Working my way down the ridge for about a half-mile, I have not heard any gobbling...and it is now fully light and nearing fly-down time. I decide to call, and at my first series of soft clucks and yelps, multiple gobblers gobble back from a ridge across a foggy draw three hundred yards away. I am in business!
Over the next half hour, I encourage them to come meet me face to face...and they gobble at everything and act like they will eventually come take a look. However, they eventually set up shop across the draw and will not budge despite my best efforts. the fog is lifting so I can see the lay of the land between me and the gobblers, so I decide to try to get closer
I drop off the ridge into the trees and brush below and begin to descend the slope, watching across the draw for any sign of the birds. Shortly, I can see a clear area across from me that runs up the draw to the open ridge...and looking with my binoculars, I quickly pick up three turkeys on the skyline two hundred yards away.
Looking them over, I can see they are all jakes...or so I think, and my first thought is that these are the birds that have been responding. I step behind some brush and begin to watch for other birds, but can see no others. In the meantime, one of them has started to work his way along the open ridge towards where I had been initially set up calling to them. He is steadily working his way along, so I decide to move back up to the ridge and see what happens, thinking I at least might have some fun with these birds.
Reaching the open ridge, I look quickly for a spot to set up, but taking a few steps forward, a gobbler suddenly steps out of the brush fifty yards away, catching me flat-footed. He quickly retreats away from me down the ridge and out of sight. This was a good, mature gobbler and he was probably working his way silently to me...IF I had just remained in my first set-up for just a while longer. ...They say patience is a virtue...which escaped me at the moment.
Shortly after the gobbler ran out of sight towards the jakes, I suddenly hear fighting purrs and wing beats in that direction. Apparently, the mature gobbler has run into the jakes...and they have decided to sort matters out as to who is the boss. At this point, I am cussing myself, but decide I am going to try to sneak closer to the ruckus by dropping back down into the brush and trees on the slope, then move back up and peak over the top a bit closer to where the brouhaha is coming from. All the while, I am now assuming that the mature gobbler is long gone, and I am just "messing" with a bunch of jakes...again, with the intention of just seeing if I can have some fun with them.
I move fifty yards closer out of sight and then carefully move up and peak over the edge of the ridge where it flattens out. The fighting has now stopped, and as I look further down the ridge with the bino's, spot two red heads looking back in my direction a hundred yards away. They do not seem terribly alarmed and I quickly duck back out of sight and continue towards them.
Thinking I am about even with them, I again move up the slope and peak over the top with the bino's. There, now seventy-five yards out, are the two birds...just standing there looking.
...To be continued...
Quote from: Rapscallion Vermilion on May 24, 2024, 02:49:17 PMLooking forward to more ... you can't just leave them standing there
Continuing on...
At this point, I was still of the mindset that these two birds were jakes, so I figured I would do a bit of "experimenting" with them. Although I rarely ever pull it out, I have a foldable silhouette "decoy" that I carry, so I decided this was a great opportunity to see how these birds would react to it. I laid my gun on the ground next to me and, kneeling in the shin-high grass, I held it up, moving it just enough to give it a bit of motion.
It caught their attention immediately and they stood, heads up, looking towards me. I figured they would high-tail-it away at any second, but instead, they began to slowly walk toward me. They would take a few steps at first, then stand and look, but soon they began a steady march at me. They came on...sixty...fifty...forty...thirty...twenty yards, and still coming.
I had noticed that one of them had a much more colorful head and was a bit taller than the other, but I was convinced that they were both jakes...until they turned broadside at ten yards and I could see a good beard hanging from the breast feathers of the bigger bird. It was a mature gobbler...and a good one!
So, here I was, kneeling down in the open, holding the decoy as much in front of me as I could, and with my gun laying on the ground next to me (Some may see a pattern from reading my past musings that I seem to get into these kinds of "fixes" more or less on a regular basis as I "age"...
)
With the turkeys now less than ten yards away, I "deduced" that my only course of action was to slowly reach down, try to pick up my gun, bring it to my shoulder, somehow get my "decoy arm" over and grab the forearm, aim, and attempt the shot...all assuming that these birds would just stand around and wait for me to do all of that. The entire affair was fully in "three-ring circus" mode at this point. I was most certainly the clown, and that they would be running for the big-top tent door at any second.
Well, as it turned out, they were quite obliging to let all of the above happen. They were so fixated on my "visual aid" that they basically just stood there, albeit somewhat nervously, while I raised the gun, hurriedly aimed, and summarily and unceremoniously dispatched the gobbler.
I didn't have far to walk, as he was probably seven or eight yards away when I shot. He turned out to be a fine, old gobbler...and probably didn't deserve to "meet his maker" in such an undignified manner, but I accepted the gift that he was, telling myself again that looking a gift gobbler in the mouth (which I most certainly did in this case) will invariably come back to bite oneself right in the backside.
As it turned out, it was probably a good move in that, for the next several days, my two companions hunted hard, but only one of them came home with another gobbler. I'm not sure I would have gotten another chance. ...So be it...
(Note: I have tried to load pictures to post here, but alas, my "tech skills" have again deserted me. If I can sort things out, I will post a picture later)...
That's it for me for this season...and it has been a memorable one. ...Hope the same for all others here on OG!
Jim