I am home now and back to work. Man it sucks. I'll suffer the post season depression for a while but I'll survive. Until the. I figured I'd tell the story of my Maine turkey and fill you in on my Minnesota hunt.
I arrived in maine around 10 am on May 22 with no real plans on where I'd be hunting. I had marked a small piece of public on onX but was hoping to find some private to hunt around that area. When I pulled down the road almost to the public I spotted 3 jakes with 3 hens in a field so I figured there were at least birds in the area but didn't find anything else that day or any private to hunt. The next morning I was in there bright and early and finally made it to the back of the public and heard a distant gobble. Heard him 4 times in total on the limb and couldn't for the life of me figure out where he was. Thick foliage and the distance combined with very flat ground was making it really hard to get even a direction on him. I listened there for a while and then moved down the path a little farther to listen some more. I began owl hooting and got two other owls going crazy. He gobbled at that and I could tell the general direction. Long story short we get over to him 1.5 hours later and he's gobbling a lot but in the thickest nastiest stuff around. Finally find a path and sit down. Yelp to him twice and he's coming down the path gobbling every 30 seconds. I never called again, never called to him when he was within 250 yards of me, but somehow he freaked out as soon as he came around the corner in the path and I panicked and took a stupid shot as I was leaving. I'm not sure what spooked him. I knew he was about to come around the corner cause he had just gobbled right there. Know I didn't move and was hidden well as I had plenty of time to pick a set up on a big tree in the shade before ever calling to him. Oh well. That day we headed further in to the state looking to find an area with less posted land and ended up eventually find a 225 acre block of woods that we were able to get permission to hunt. The next morning we heard several turkeys gobbling on the property but they were on the side of the owners house where she had asked us not to hunt. One bird was on our side of the road but when we got back to him realized he was actually across a large body of water and a gravel road. No luck the rest of that day but that evening we went to roost that bird and watched 2 longbeards in a small pasture before going to roost. One of them actually flew up right beside us before flying back down and going to roost with his buddy across the field. Got set up the next morning knowing we'd be in the ball park but not sure exactly where they had roosted. Set up in the dark and when they started gobbling they were at about my 9:00 position and 250 yards away across the field. It was still dark enough that I went ahead and turned to face them and once it got a little lighter I could see one roosted in a big pine. There was a slight hill in the pasture and I was pretty confident they would pitch right towards me and into that hillside out of sight. I never made a sound until they flew down, but when I did they immediately answered my calls and the next gobble was closer. They continued gobbling and coming right down my barrel until I could hear one drumming 40 yards away and just out of sight. Luckily they gobbled a lot because they tried to skirt around to my left far enough that I wouldn't have gotten a shot had they not gobbled and let me know what they were doing. I swung left just in time before the lead bird came out from behind a fallen tree at 30 yards and quickly ended the hunt
I was going to hit a few states in the northeast but the weather wasn't going to be very good and my wife was stressing about chores at home. We made the call to head home and I convinced my dad to make a run with me to Minnesota for a few days since we had somehow gone all spring without hunting together a single time. Honestly I'm embarrassed to admit that. I let traveling and hunting get in the way of hunting with my dad and it's definitely something that I need to prioritize better. We normally hunt Indiana together but I was on the road that week and then he was sick when I got home. So anyway we head to Minnesota and first morning we head in to a spot I hunted last year that is a real pain to get to. A long ways from any access and some very thick woods with no path to get there. The walk took a little longer than expected but we weren't too terribly late and birds were gobbling EVERYWHERE! We heard between 7-10 birds gobbling but the majority were on private and the ones on our side just didn't gobble very much once they hit the ground. Despite hearing so many birds we never even got in the game that morning and eventually made the long walk back to go check out another piece of public I had found some birds on last year. After some walking and calling we finally struck a bird around 3:30 in the afternoon but he was pretty far off and on private. He was answering all of my calls so we just hung out for a while to see if he would do anything. After 15 minutes or so his gobble sounded really muffled and I told dad we might need to find an actual set up because the bird was clearly making some kind of move. Still in no rush at this point we were calmly looking around for a good place to sit when he lets out a nice clear gobble on top of the hill with us and 125 yards away. We quickly set up and the game is on. He gets to 75-80 yards and hangs up for a long time. I'd guess 30-40 minutes but I'm not really sure. I shut up for a long time and eventually got him to break with some soft yelps on my wingbone. He came strutting through the thick woods and gobbling right in our faces several times before finally getting into an opening where dad could get a good shot at 35-40 yards. The gun goes off and the turkey falls but comes right back up and takes off through the thick woods. I take off after him trying to get a follow up shot but every time I'd get a clear look at him he would turn behind another tree or a set of bushes. Finally at the lip of the hill I'm running hard worried he might be able to glide off the side when I hit the log with my right foot. I never even saw it but it sent me to the ground tumbling hard. To make matters worse, when I got back up the bird was nowhere to be seen. I ended up breaking a toe on my right foot and losing a slate call with the turkey getting away. I felt terrible and dad felt worse. Which made me feel even worse. But we can laugh about it now a few days later. The last morning we got close at the original spot but the bird cut off my soft yelps at 75 yards and then never gobbled again. I hate that it ended like that but it was still a great trip with my dad
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