Well went out to Nebraska this past weekend. My uncle has lived out there and we travel there at least once every turkey season for the past 9 years. Over the past few years it has started to become a lot harder. Turkey hunting is already hard, but then when it gets even harder it's really tough! On our way out, we spotted several birds. We got there and still saw quite a few. My fiance has been hunting turkeys with me the last couple years. Last year we hunted 6 days out there and nothing. This year we hunted 3 days and still nothing. She has also hunted back here in Illinois with me and has yet to kill a
bird.Now here's where the hunting story begins.
First morning out, we set up along a field. Had a couple full strutters out in the field. Now I usually don't like to use decoys but this time I set out a hen and a jake. The birds pitched out and looked at the decoys and never even gave it a thought. They went and found some hens on the other side of the field and completely ignored us. We spent the next four hours running and gunning. Went to a public site and had a truck come within 100 yards of us. They slowed down and we could hear the driver ask the passenger what we were doing. The passenger replied looks like they're hunting and then the truck continued to drive through the field. They went over a hill and the next thing I know BAM! Rifle shot. We decided we better walk back to the truck and head somewhere else. We spent the next few hours trying to get on some birds but no luck.
On the second day, we set up on some ground that had an alfalfa field where we had spotted a gobbler in it when scouting the night before. We set up in what seemed to be "the perfect spot." We decided to use a decoy once again in the field. Bird hit the ground and gobbled every now and again and we could tell he was coming closer. Started calling and he gobbled his head off coming our way. We sat there and waited patiently. The hen came up out of the creek bottom with her head down in the field about 25 yards from our tree. As soon as she got on the level ground she stuck her head up and was shocked to see a hen there. She immediately got nervous and started putting. In an attempt to calm her down, I started yelping and the gobbler fired off. The hen however went back down in the creek and never heard the gobbler again. We went back to the same public ground as the day before. We were calling when all of a sudden a jake fired off. He came out into the field and started strutting and kept gobbling. He was fired up and on his way. We watched him from about 200 yards out coming in across the field. He got to about 80 yards and BAM! He flops around. Only it definitely wasn't us shooting. Some guy had belly crawled through the field and shot him. The guy starts to stand up and he's about 60 yards from us. In the calm before the storm, I decided it was best to get outta that place. Never did get on another gobbler that afternoon.
On the third day we could only hunt until about noon so we started off in the alfalfa field again. Only we set up about 200 yards closer on the other side of the creek where the gobbler had walked the day before. The gobbler fired off and we figured he was on his way. A hen walked the top edge of the field as she had done the day before. Only the gobbler was following her today and not the one from the day before. I tried sneaking around and beating him to his spot but to no avail. He must have gobbled 100 times in an hour at me. He just kept walking the other way. We tried a couple other spots and nothing. So we ended our weekend trip and came back home.
Turkey hunting can be amazing sometimes and other times just plain frustrating. We will attempt to make another trip out there later on and try getting her her first turkey if she hasn't killed one in Illinois before then.
