The good, the bad, and the ugly (not necessarily in that order)

 Yesterday was my first solo trip to Erie this year. Of course with all my solo trips I arrived later than I had wanted. Anyway, I got out and set up in the same spot we hit 'em last week. Bad news, the fish that were there had moved on to different waters. Let the search commence... after a couple hours I finally boated my first walleye and after only a couple short hours after that I boated my second walleye. I knew that the clouds were going to move in for the afternoon and as with Lake Michigan, Erie has not been kind to me when it's cloudy. So the race was on to fill my limit before the clouds moved in, long story short it didn't happen.

one 22" 'er and a smaller eater

Once the clouds moved in I caught a goo sorry no pic but it's in the vid.

I also caught this cat.

 

Here's the vid:

So the bad is I didn't even get close to a limit, the ugly is the trash I was able to catch, the good however....

This 30" walleye is not only my personal best, but it's the biggest walleye I've ever seen live. A true Lake Erie donkey, by the way he's still in the lake for you to catch.

Busy last 2 weeks

 Monday afternoon Jake and I finally made it to Nebraska, got settled in and started scouting some spots to start hunting Tuesday morning. 

Tuesday we started off on a the "3000" named because that's how many acre's the section was.

We set up back by that dead tree in the background, unfortunately after the sun came up we realized we were just a little too close as the bird we were hunting was roosted only 100 yards away. Yep, he watched every move we made and then flew down in the opposite direction never to be seen again.

Midday after a short scouting session and dropping some clothes Jake yelped a couple times from a ridge top. 

We heard 2 distinct gobbles, one to the left which Jake went after and one to the right which I went after. My hunt went kinda like this, the gobble was to the West so walk straight north 4-500 yards then West the same distance set up in a semi open area and call.

Not the actual spot

 As I called and listened I knew the bird was getting closer so I repositioned and awaited his grand entrance. When he finally showed he just stretched his neck up and looked like a periscope going up at 25 yards. Since I just had a feeling this is where he would show all I had to do was move the gun a couple inches and cover his head with the red dot and wham... my first Rio.

He went 21#'s with a  9 and 1/4" beard and 1" spurs, a good 3 year old.

 Jake's hunt didn't turn out as good, he ended up chasing his bird in a big circle until finally the bird saw him at 100 yards and headed for the next hill.

Tuesday we started with another failed morning hunt

Then we regrouped for the midday hunt, and Jake finally got to punch a tag.

He got his bird at "the mud road" property which we named because the minimum maintenance roads

 and all dirt roads turn to snot when it rains. This section we couldn't even get on Tuesday because of the roads. He shot a mean old bird, he was a 3 year old with one broke spur and now very little beard. When Jake was looking to get the shot he yelped to get the bird to come out of strut and lift his head. Instead the bird gobbled right tword Jake, so when he shot he blasted off most of the birds beard. Good story for the mount.

Wednesday started with an alien sighting. When we were making out way to our first spot Jake looked up and saw this.

No joke there were 17 lights in the first string and I stopped counting at 30 in the second. They were going right over us, they didn't have any blinking lights and were way up there. I told Jake if we just end up at our starting spot (no memory of how we got there) and my butt hurts (they probe you) I'm going to be pissed.

Well, we made it to our starting spot and Jake had some time to google the phenomenon and found out it was actually Elon Musks space X project we saw. I was pretty happy to hear that, I didn't want to get probed.

We did make it to our last morning hunt which turned out to be yet another failure.

We actually set up on the furthest left tree on this day. This was our Tuesday spot.

 After making a 2 mile hike and setting up on 2 birds that when they flew down headed directly away from us, we went back to the truck and made plans for the afternoon hunt. After chasing more birds to Kansas we did a little scouting and found a couple birds on an ag field between the 3000 and the barn (where we stayed).

Well, we found the owner did a little knock and talk and got permission to hunt the prop. We sat on the field and watched the tom's roost for the night and then worked on a game plan.

There were 2 male turkey's one-Laurel was a skinny submissive Rio tom that followed the second bird-Hardy a nice Eastern around with his 7 hens. You knew which was the dominate bird because Hardy was always in strut and Laurel just kinda hung around with him. Laurel had no beard or spurs that we could see but we knew he was a he.

Anyway the plan was I would take Laurel and Jake would get Hardy, so the next morning we waited for the pair and the hens to fly down, so we could sneak in to the green path they were using and set up. 

We put out the DSD strutter and a hen decoy about 15 yards from where we were on a small hill. Jake yelped and cut a little to bring the hens over with the Tom's in tow. As soon as Hardy saw the strutter he made a B line for it, he wasn't going to let another bird on his turf with his ladies. As Hardy got closer to the strutter I whispered to Jake to let me know before he shoot's so we could shoot at the same time.

Well, I watched Hardy out of the corner of my eye, while waiting for Laurel to catch up. Right before Hardy was going to jump on the stutter Jake squeezed the trigger. When the gun went boom Laurel seemed to snap out of his stupid daze and dropped his head and took off leaving Hardy to fend for himself. Needless to say I threw out 2 shots that didn't connect. So Jake got Hardy and Laurel lives to be stupid another day. The only pic I got was on Jake's phone, if he sends me his pics I'll post it next week.

 So that's how our Nebraska turkey hunt went and ended. We had a really good time, the locals were super friendly, the accommodations were phenomenal and the landscape was really cool.

I think we may have even learned some stuff about these "hill birds", which are the birds we hunted. I guess there are 2 classifications of turkey's in Nebraska hill birds and bottom land birds, with the hill birds being the harder birds to hunt. I believe that wholeheartedly. 

Here's a couple bonus pics... there's these little waterholes all over the place.

 So we got home Saturday morning I worked Sunday and since weekdays needed help for the first time this year I worked Monday and Tuesday. 

 

 

Wednesday I took a day off work and headed to Lake Erie with a buddy of mine. The morning wasn't looking good but the afternoon looked like we could get on. So, we left town at noon and got set up on the lake ready to fish by 3:30 and after talking to the couple of guys at the boat launch we found out they really weren't biting. They were marking fish but they just couldn't get 'em to bite. Anyway, I was setting up the last rod when one fired. I gave that one to John and he was fighting that one when the second rod fired. We lost one at the net and put one in the box. Long story short we got off the lake around 7 and headed for home with this.

Mostly 22" 'ers

Have to agree.... they just weren't biting.