One of my buddies is a turkey hunting maniac and he has been having a tough year. No gobbling. Honey holes void of turkeys. Bad weather. He wanted to go this morning so I hit the road at 3 am to his house. Once we got to the spot there was no gobbling. Not one gobble. I have been there and heard gobbles in all directions at sunup before. We got to prowling. Long about 7:30 he thought he heard a gobble. His ears are better than mine. We started easing that way. Sure enough it was a gobbler.
We made our move to head him off at the pass but suddenly he gobbled a lot closer. We stopped and lo and behold he stepped out into a big cow pasture about 500 yards from where we were sneaking down a brush line. I saw him step out and was looking at him through my binos when he gobbled again. I told my buddy "There he is right there". We both flattened out on the ground. We were on him!
We crawled, crawled, crawled through all kinds of stuff to get to the edge of the field. Once we were there we had a perfect set up with honeysuckle and stuff in front of us. A hen came out into the field with him. Then another tom. My buddy started to call and over the next about 30 minutes our big tom would strut and zig zag around, go away from us, go in circles, and all sorts of things, but we had an ace in the hole. That hen was trending in our direction.
Our bird was hot cutting the call and breeding the ground at one point. It was just like on TV watching the tom strutting and all that. Over time the hen disappeared to our left and tom was still out there hung up at maybe 100 yards. All this time I had the shot on the bird. My buddy could not see him that much, but through my hole in the vines I could see him great.
Then it happened. The hen that disappeared to our left suddenly came walking down the edge of the field right where we were. At one point she was lingering no more than 6 feet in front of us. I just knew she was going to bust us. I even closed my eyes so she wouldn't see me blink. She walked on by headed to our right.
Now we were in the catbird seat between the tom and the hen. I had a thistle picked out as my mark. When big boy got the the thistle it was going to be lights out. And then he hooked to the right toward my buddy. Fact is I have never killed a turkey. Every time at the critical moment when I want them to zig they zag to my buddy. This has happened a number of times.
Sure enough he kept trending right until I couldn't see him any more. He was close though. My buddy couldn't see him either and whispered to me "Where is he now". When I told him he raised his gun as slow as molasses and big boy stepped into his vision at what turned out to be 37 long steps.
At the shot I could kind of see the turkey and he just piled up. My buddy was so happy he started hugging me and I felt really happy he had gotten a good one after all his trying. But I still have never actually shot a turkey!
Later we got onto two more gobblers who were working our way until two dogs chased a deer right through our spot. I watched the turkeys turn their backs to us and walk into the treeline and that was the last time we saw them. We hot footed it around to try to get ahead of them but the next time we heard them they were way off and we didn't hear them again.
A mighty fine day!
Happy guy
Maybe next time
Spurs
Joys of spring
