Montana season starts in two weeks. I made it out to do a little looking and listening from the road this morning in the Limited Permit area that my wife and youngest son drew. These are the first two limited tags we've had here in MT since moving here in 2011. We have to drive 3 hours either way for our general tags.
I heard two or three birds gobbling together with a bunch of hens yelping in the trees across the sage. Most of the open area there is state land and some of the trees. The birds were on the border of private and public, but should be huntable here if they will split up some. If they cross the road to the land behind me, we'd have a lot more area to chase them.
I then drove up a gulch in the mountains where I've ran into several toms the last couple years while running the dog.
The wind picked up and the road I wanted to drive up is closed until May 15. I didn't hear any turkeys, but did see these elk.
And......these mule deer when I drove back out of the mountains.
It was well past sunrise by the time I drove to another area that I've seen turkeys near through last fall. While I didn't see any turkeys, I did see some good looking country and ran into a herd of 40 or so elk crossing the road.
Here they are moving up through the trees. There are several elk in the photo, but most are behind the trees.
Four of them didn't make it across the road once they spotted me.
I had one more stretch of road that I wanted to drive where I've seen a hen before. In addition to the hen, two coworkers see turkeys through here while driving to work.
I spotted four or five hens with a jake in tow crossing the road. They had just come out of someone's yard/barn lot. I stopped on the road and took several photos of the jake. He gobbled for me several times with a little short jake Merriam's gobble.
You can see the jake on the left behind the cedar.
A couple miles further and I spotted a male turkey run across the road ahead of me. He wouldn't slow down enough for me to catch a photo of him and I never got the binos on him either. I couldn't see a beard, but that doesn't tell me a lot with these mountain birds.
I'd like to say both of their tags will be filled with adult birds, but it will be Boyd's first turkey and Heather hasn't hunted/killed a bird in 8 or 9 years. I'll just have to try and locate adult birds before I get them near a jake because I don't believe I'll be holding either of them back.
It was a fairly good start for such a short "from the road" scouting trip.
