This is my first story here. In my opinion, the retelling of a good hunt is only 2nd to the hunt itself. As I get older my memory isn’t as good as it used to but this one stands out in my memory bank. Hope you enjoy.
Foggy Morning Breakdown
There’s something about Hunting in the fog. I can’t really explain it. Maybe it’s the mystique, the eeriness, or the beauty of God's creation waking up as nighttime gives way today on a calm cool spring morning. When you add in turkey hunting to the mix, in my opinion, you have the recipe for something magical.
Where I hunt in southern Alabama, the woods are very thick, as it is in most of the south. You can have a gobbler within 20 yards of you sometimes and still not be able to see him. But there’s something about staring blindly into a bank of fog and hearing an Ol’ Tom rattle the ground that moves you to your core. This particular morning last spring was one of them type of mornings.
I had found this particular gobbler 2 days prior when I was able to fire him up mid-morning while waking down an old logging road. I quickly struck out walking toward him through a thick bottom. I had closed the distance to within a hundred yards when I realized he was out in the edge of a 3 year old clearcut. I slowly eased a little closer and stopped little ways before the opening. I sat down and started calling softly. After some enticing, I was able to get him to come close to the edge of the woods, but he would not leave the clearcut. After nearly an hour of fooling with him, and me being unable to reposition on him, a hen finally came and drug him away.
Fast forward 2 days later ....It was one of the foggiest mornings of the season. I knew about where he was roosted, so I came in from a different route and made my way down a road that split the clearcut. The road was located right in the center of a ridgeline. On the left side of the road was a wide creek bottom that butted up to another clearcut. The right side was a thick head that made its way around the ridge and on down to the creek. The gobbler was strutting and gobbling down near that head 2 days ago.
So, walking in the predawn darkness I had a destination in mind. I was headed back to the edge of the clearcut where it coupled to the wood-line, but this time I would be set up before daylight and ready for him if he flew down in the same place.
I had just got settled in, as daylight was relieving darkness from her shift and taking over for the day when I heard him gobble. But he wasn’t where I expected him to be, he was across the ridge and that wide creek bottom roosted on the edge of a different clearcut. I slowly made my way from my initial setup over the ridge and down to the edge of the creek.
Some of the creek bottoms where I hunt are flooded, depending on how much rain there has been, as was this one. So, There was no way to get across it quietly or dryly
, so I backed up into a bush and settled in. I knew my chances weren’t the best at luring him across that flooded creek bottom, but I was gonna give it my best effort.
I gave him a few soft tree yelps and he answered almost immediately. I decided to shut up and not call anymore for awhile. All the time he is steadily gobbling somewhere out there through all that dense fog. I knew from experience if I yelped too much he wouldn’t want to fly down, waiting for the hen to come to him before making his pitch down for the day.
So I waited almost 20 minutes and offered him a few more soft yelps, which he had been anxiously waiting to hear, because He gobbled mid yelp, cutting me off. He had been on the roost for nearly an hour now and he had probably gobbled over 50 times ( which is rare for the turkeys I hunt). Most will only gobble 5-10 times if you’re lucky, some not that much. With predators or hunting pressure being the culprit, we don’t have the 70-100 gobbling turkeys we did of years past. I knew if I didn’t do something, a real hen was going to come to him ..and soon.
Knowing I needed to do something more aggressive, I decided to do a fly down cackle with my mouth yelper. I keep a real turkey wing in my vest but have used my hat on my leg before many times and that seems to work just fine as well. I started off slow and quiet and built the intensity of the cackle, all the while beating the wing on my leg. After simulating hitting the ground, I gave one soft series of yelps and then put the call down to not tempt myself to call anymore.
Silence .... I started worrying that I had overdone it. Something that I have done before earlier in my turkey hunting career, and they clam up never to be heard again.
I’ll never forget that sound. The sound of wings flapping, silence, then more flapping, getting closer and closer. As he drew close enough, I could hear the unmistakable sound that the wind makes as it moves across a large gobbler's wings. He flew all the way across that creek bottom and pitched out into the clearcut up the hill from me. ( I measured later, it was 75 yds from where I set up to the other side where he was roosted)
It only took him a little over 10 seconds or so to make the traverse across the creek bottom, but it felt like a minute or two waiting for him to break through the fog and into the opening. My heart was racing, my breaths were short and shallow, and my nerves had my muscles tense and slightly quivering. The effects of the anticipation that only an approaching gobbler can give you.
It was a beautiful sight to see him come out of that thick bank... his wings cutting through the fog, soaring out on to the side of the hill and setting down like a plane coming in for a landing.
I watched him for a solid couple of minutes. He would go into a half strut, then stop and stand as tall as he could... trying to locate that hen that was playing hard to get. He repeated this process a few times until he started slowly making his way down the ridge toward me. All the while I’ve had my sights trained on him ever since he hit the ground . When he finally cleared the last obstruction, I squeezed off the shot and he dropped where he stood. I quickly jumped up and ran over to where he was standing, making sure I hadn’t imagined the whole series of events that transpired over the last hour. I stepped on his head and the hunt was complete. I hope to see many more foggy spring mornings, but he had just enjoyed his last. An awesome end to an awesome hunt, but that wasn’t the end. He had one more surprise for me.
It wasn’t till later when I was having a friend take some pictures for me that I noticed his beard was stuck together. He actually had 4 beards.
9 1/4”, 9”, 9 , and 7”
Every turkey hunt is memorable, but some stand out in your memory more than others. I believe this will be one of those.
So...Yeah, there’s something very magical, and yes, awesome about hunting in the fog.
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