Idaho Depredation Turkey Hunt

[Eddie12]

Hello and Happy New Year OG! It's been awhile since I've been on here. I was selected for a depredation turkey hunt on private land and wow what an awesome experience. I had applied back in the spring-summer and honestly wasn't expecting to get a phone call from the local fish and game office but thankfully I did. It was a very easy process getting the license and 3 tags. Since these tags are special turkey tags I could kill either a hen or a bearded turkey. I've hunted Idaho public land the last couple of years without any success and it's tough to get on birds mainly due to the hunting pressure. I called the landowner and he explained that he had a bunch of nuisance turkeys getting into his hay stacks every day. I planned a day with him and went open minded. The reason I say this is cause of the way it was explained to me it would be more killing than actually hunting.

Now to the good stuff or the hunt. I showed up that morning and met the landowner. There were turkeys everywhere on his property but mostly around his hay stacks and cattle. They must really like the barley that's in the hay and to get out of the weather-snow. On my way to the hay stacks to get setup there were already 20-30 hens and 1 gobbler on the hay. Of course I spooked them before getting a shot off but my plan was to just wait them out. I setup on top of his hay stacks and within 30 minutes I had turkeys within 40-50 yards. I called very little with my mouth but they were coming anyways. The first group of 6 turkeys were all long beards. I quickly downed 2 of them with my Stoeger M3000 using Winchester Long Beard XR's before the rest took off. My gun patterns better with #6's but I like to mix them up with #5's as well. There was at least 50+ turkeys that flew off that I couldn't even see in the distance. I would bet there were easily over 100 turkeys total on his property that day. I went back to my truck for about an hour to wait them out. The landowner said that normally within an hour or so they would return and what do you know they did. I was able to get setup without spooking many this time. Here came 30-40 turkeys and I picked out the biggest gobbler that presented the best shot and I downed him at about 35 yards. The longest beard was 8" and the longest spurs were 3/4". I am going to mount the one tail fan to include the beard and spurs. I fried one of the turkey breasts up the following day and it was delicious. After the hunt I thanked the landowner and he thanked me just as much if not more. The good news is and fingers crossed I may have a spot to turkey hunt come Spring. I am very thankful for my first Merriam's and it was a great hunting experience. Enjoy the pics. 

Eddie

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[mtns2hunt]

Turkey Heaven? Sounds like a fun time and a beautiful place. Congratulations.

[Eddie12]

Turkey heaven indeed. Thanks I appreciate it.


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[hotspur]

Very cool , nice pics , thanx for sharing

[GobbleNut]

Congratulations on your birds,...but could you make those pictures just a little bigger? ...Can't quite make them out... (smiley emoji's here)

[Eddie12]

Thanks guys. Ha Ha I noticed that after I posted them. They look fine on my phone but on the computer they are HUGE. lol


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[Muzzy61]

Congrats, looked like a great time.

[Eddie12]

Thanks. Any idea how I can fix the pics without deleting and re-adding them?


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[Eddie12]

I couldn't figure out a way other than deleting and re-adding them so here they are again but hopefully smaller this time.




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[GobbleNut]

Much better, Eddie.  I like the camo job with the turkey tracks on the gun, by the way.  I assume that is some kind of camo wrap rather than a dip job?

[Eddie12]

That's actually the factory camo from Stoeger. The finish is super nice and has held up so far. I added the turkey tracks though. If I remember correctly I got them from eBay for just a few bucks.


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[Hobbes]

Congrats!  Good looking birds.  It's incredible what a flock of turkeys can do to round bales searching for grain.

[Eddie12]

Yeah for sure here is a pic of the one side of his hay stack. You can see where they are scratching at it and the trap that fish and game put out. I couldn't believe all of the poop on the hay and around his barn. If I heard him correctly they had caught roughly 20 turkeys so far. He said they draw blood to make sure they don't have a disease and then relocate them to a different unit. Pretty wild really.




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[Eddie12]

My apologies I didn't include the trap pic.




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[Hobbes]

Yeah in addition to destroying bales of hay, I'm pretty sure they can contaminate them with poop to the point of not being useable.


Eastern MT had to do some similar hunts back around 08 or 09, but I wasn't living here then.  I've talked to one farmer that said he had so many birds roosting in trees between his feed barn and house that they were killing trees and any grass that he had.  I wasn't too sure that I believed him.  However, I could see a couple dead trees there.  After seeing the piles that my two tame birds left under their roost, I could see a couple hundred birds making one heck of a mess over an entire winter.