GobbleNut Hunt Log 2024

[GobbleNut]

Tuesday, March 26th:  Truck is loaded and ready to head west tomorrow morning for the next few days.  The season has been on in the area I am going since last Saturday but the weather has been terrible.  Supposed to be nice while I'm there so I'm glad I waited...finally got lucky with possibly hitting the weather right, unlike the last few hunts in the past couple of years.  Big question mark is whether the birds are ready to go or not.  Will see soon enough...

Where I'm headed is pretty isolated with almost no cell service and very little contact with the civilized world.  Probably won't hear from me for a few days.  Here's hoping Sasquatch is not on the prowl...   

Good luck to all who may also be headed out to hunt.   

[crow]

Safe trip and good hunting to you

[JeffC]

Safe travels and wish you a successful hunt, dont worry about the rest of your "Grummpies", I will keep an eye on them. 

[Happy]

Good luck, Jim. Be safe and have fun. Keep an eye out for sabbaticals

Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

[zelmo1]

Good luck bro  Z

[GobbleNut]

Wednesday, March 27th:  Arrive at hunt location mid-afternoon.  The weather has cleared, but it is apparent by the snow accumulation that the previous few days have been ugly here.  The lack of camps in this usually busy area has me thinking that the snow has suspended hunting by most folks who might have otherwise been here. 

Fortunately, where I intend to camp is slightly lower in elevation than the snow line, but the ground is saturated from the snow/rain mix. Although the main (unpaved) road is passable, it is a muddy mess and by the time I get to my camp site, the truck has accumulated a few hundred pounds of added weight i in the form of a thick coating of mud pretty much on everything.  Thank goodness for four-wheel-drive!  The secondary roads are obviously impassable, and was the case in last year's hunt, there will be no driving off of the main road again this year. 

I have a plan for (hopefully) roosting birds at dark, and for whatever reason, the gobblers are quite cooperative.  I locate several gobblers in one area, and much to my surprise, there appears to be no one else around besides me to hunt them.  I cross my fingers that that will be the case in the morning and return to camp with the intention of being there well before daylight tomorrow morning.   

[GobbleNut]

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)

[Happy]

Atta boy Jom! Glad it was a good hunt.

Good-looking and Platinum level member of the Elitist club

[crow]

Very exciting morning, congrats on a special hunt and gobbler.
Nice job Capt.

[Rapscallion Vermilion]

  Good job and great write-up Jim, I enjoyed that

[Vintage]

Great Hunt one you will never forget. Congrats.

[TrackeySauresRex]

Another great read Jim . Congrats on a great hunt.

[Paulmyr]

  atta boy! Leading by example! Way to get it done Jim!

[zelmo1]

Congrats Jim, well done. Z

[JeffC]

Awesome job Jim!! That kind of morning with all that gobbling would make a season, the Trophy Merriam is icing on the cake!! Glad you had a safe and successful hunt. Great read and pictures were not that bad.