After a whole month of rain, wind, clouds, no fish and just bad luck in general I finally made something happen.
Monday I awoke with dreams of turkeys racing through my head. I had some coffee and headed over to get in on the no show draw on Mongo (public prop) it's only a 17 minute ride from the house. On the way I drew out my game plan in my head.
First I would owl hoot 2 spots on the way to the sign in, just in case I did get drawn.
Second if I didn't get drawn I would head to the house, owl hooting at a very small public spot on the way.
Third if nothing gobbles at the 2nd spot I would go home and head to the magic 5 acres after 10am or so. I've learned that spot is one that comes alive later in the day since no birds roost there in the spring.
On the way to sign in I hooted up 3 birds so if I get drawn I felt confident I would have a spot to go to. Well, when it was time to do the no show draw it turns out there was 22 dudes and a chic vying for 9 no show spots.
I didn't get drawn, as soon as I realized my number didn't get drawn I headed out the door and flew to #2 in the plan.
It was getting kinda late in the day the sun wasn't to far from rising and I had my doubts but I forced myself to stop and give'er a try. When I hooted I had 2 birds fire off, one 400 yards away give or take and one a couple hundred yards across the road. When I hooted again I had 4 birds fire off, the birds I was interested in were the 400 yard bird to the south and one 300 yards to the west. Well, that settles it I ran the car down the road, grabbed my gear and made the half mile hike down the road to the spot I was going to cut into the woods.
I made my way back to a spot I sat at last week and started getting set up, when the south bird gobbled on his own. When I finished getting everything ready this bird had gobbled at least 15 times. I started with some yelps and cuts just to let him know there's a new lady in town. He hit the ground around 6:20 and kept gobbling so I got a little more aggressive with my calling hoping to turn him and bring him my way.
An hour went by and he had cut the distance from the 400 where he started to under a hundred and just over the little hill I was hunting behind. The whole time I was calling him in I kept thinking,"this is going to happen". I couldn't see him yet but I sure could hear him, when he was gobbling that close it felt like he was in my lap. As I was calling to him and straining to see over the hill I was looking at my decoys when "it" happened, my feeder hen just fell over and was laying on her side on the trail. It was now I started hearing some putts from a hen, also over the hill, so there was no way for me to get up and fix the decoy. All I could do was hope that decoy on it's side didn't screw up this hunt. This was the first time I thought,"dammit" she could see the decoy and bounce or she could drag him off. Either way she could be gone and he would follow, so I started calling to her to keep her calm and have her drag him into the set. Well, it worked she calmed down and it wasn't too long after I heard her she popped her head up over the hill and started making her way down the deer trail I had the decoys set up on.
This was the first time I saw the Tom in full strut just over the rise I only saw him for a couple seconds but man was he stunning. While she decided to make her way into the decoys he finally popped out into a little shooting lane that I had cleared previously. As soon as he came out of strut and picked his head up to look around I put the red dot on his head and squeezed the trigger.
He dropped out of sight, I scrambled to my feet and ran over to him while reloading just in case.
Turns out I didn't need the second shot.
 | ||
410 @ 35 yards 25# birds with 10 1/2" beard and 1 1/4" spurs |
No comments:
Post a Comment