Glad to be back for another fun spring.
03\14\2026
MS Opener
Couldn't have asked for a more perfect morning to start off the 2026 season with, Beautiful. We are in a refueling outage at work of course as we are every other spring, so I haven't had a chance to do any scouting. I went in blind and got to my listening spot well before first light. I sat down and got comfortable waiting on the woods to wake up. In the distance I can hear whippoorwills and a few owls then I start hearing some sickly owls far in the distance. These particular owls are different in the fact that they are some sort of new species of ground owls. There isn't a gobble in earshot for some crazy reason, but the ground owls are getting closer to me by the minute. One from the north one from the north east. I let them hop the fence on to my lease and let out a gosh awful owl hack that even someone that has never heard an owl would know to run from. Got to love some poachers especially on opening day.
It's now good light and I'm baffled that it is so quiet. Then I hear a faint gobble in the distance one of those so far you can't tell what direction it was. He gobbles again and he's back towards the gate so I take off. He's right at a mile away and by the time I get there he's pretty fired up and now I can hear that its two of them. I make my move and cut the distance to about 150yds and stop to access my situation when I hear it, A slate call and it's an aggressive call to say the least. My heard sunk and just started burning. Seriously, So I decide I'll just shoot it out from under the poacher. I get into position and get to thinking that there is a slight snowballs chance that it could be an older member of the lease that has only hunted 1 time in 4 years. So I ease out and I see dew gone off the grass coming from my car. I slip out to see they had hidden their truck from view but now I knew that it was someone possibly in the club. Possibly I send a pic to my buddy that has the lease and he checks and then tells me it's his dad and a grandson. He wanted to go let the grandson listen to a turkey, so he stopped at this track of land because it was on his way to the other track he wanted to go to. When he heard the bird gobbling he took his grandson down into the woods and started calling to it to make it gobble more. When they came out we talked for a bit and he apologized for messing me up and I was adamite that they didn't mess me up at all. I wish I had known they were coming we could have all sat together and maybe got the grandson a bird.
No worries/All good.
3\15\2026
I only have about 1.5hrs to make a quick hunt before having to be a work a little late. It's turkey season and the outage has run long, I've got to keep my sanity.
I get to my listening spot in hopes of hearing the bird from the morning before and just after first light I hear a gobble and it's a ways off. He's to far to go after but I decided to close the distance and see if I could get some intel for tomorrow, my birthday and my wife wants to go with me so the intel could be valuable. So this is a turkey hunting forum and we talk turkey so I'll just throw this out there because I know for a fact I'm not the only one...As I'm covering some ground I have a pain hit me in the gut, having taken care of some paperwork prior to leaving I thought maybe it was nothing. Well about 3 steps later I soon realized it was not nothing and definitely something not to be messed with. WHY does this happen in the turkey woods. There is no medicine out there that can compete with a gobbling turkey and day breaking. So now I'm a couple minutes behind and when I get all my stuff back on, I hear a gobble and he's way closer than the other bird. The roll in his gobble told me exactly what bird he was too. And I knew exactly where he was. I had killed a bird there last year. I take off trying to beat the ever breaking dawn. I hop a deep creek and he lets out a thunderous gobble right where I was trying to get. He was on the ground early and he was ripping it. I was able to close another 60yds before having to sit down in a clump of trees. The ridge he was on was 50yds in front of me and he was just out of sight at maybe 60yds. I sat in a saddle and had the ridge run out to my left and then it kind of came down and died off to my right. When I sat down I scratched the leaves and he gobbled. I scratched again and it was two gobbles a second bird had joined. I'd scratch and then throw a soft cluck and purr to my left and they would make the leaves shake around me when they would gobble(its been a while having them like that). In the distance I can hear another poacher calling and getting closer. I'm in a much better spot and they are a good ways off so I continue to work the birds. I called and scratched one more time and went silent. They gobbled about 4 more times together and then the gobbles were separated by a couple yards. They are now moving and one gobbler pops out on the ridge walking to my left at about 50yds and he's looking, he'd gobble at the other bird and take a step and look. I stayed frozen not wanting to spook him in hopes the second bird would either come in the saddle with me or skirt the ridge top a little closer. We'll it worked out, the second bird comes strutting on the side of the ridge at about 35yds to my left I let him go behind a tree and I swing around when he struts out in the open, I clucked and that was it. I felt really bad because I was wishing my wife was there to shoot, but with the poachers I can't let them walk. The Good Lord really blesses me with some unreal hunts and this was another one. It's been a little while since I've heard birds gobble that hard that close.
Started my tracker after I put my vest back on at 6:50 walked 3/10's of a mile and pulled the trigger at 7:13 was at work by 8, granted I did cleaned him in my office. LOL
This is the second year I've killed a bird on this ridge. They are cutting it close. Crazy how you can have 1000's of acres(I don't) and the birds seem to always be across the line.
