I headed to my church this morning, the turkey woods. It was slow, but around 10:00 the boys started to fire up. Soon I was working 2 gobblers, one at each end of the field. They were going hoarse gobbling at my calls. One of them was getting close, then I caught movement out of my peripheral vision. I eased my gaze in that direction. Standing at the fence was........
NO, not a gobbler coming in..........
but a man in jeans, a black T-shirt and ball cap with no gun.
WTF?
He dropped to the ground, slid under the bottom strand of barbed wire, got up and started walking across the field. I whistled and waved to him. He waved back and continued walking.
So I got up and walked to him.
I asked who he was, and he replied his name was Dale, and he's a neighbor taking a shortcut home.
I explained to him that people hunt this ranch and he just ruined my hunt. I was nice about it because I didn't know if he was telling the truth, or who he knew, plus I've been trying trying to get permission to hunt the other ranch as well.
He apologized and asked what I would like him to do. I said if you could cross the creek and stay out of sight in the woods instead of walking across an open field that would be good. He did exactly that.
Shortly after, the wife texted me to say the family was on the way over for the Easter meal. So of course when I was almost home, I heard a couple of gobblers fire up again, and it's supposed to rain tomorrow.
Oh well, if it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck.
