Friday April 14, 2006

I spent a few nights this week walking C.F. Phelps WMA in Southwestern Fauquier County. With the aid of some aerial photography that I got at work and a road map I tried to pinpoint the most logical places to find turkeys. That place is actually really nice. It's state owned and open to public hunting, and they have agricultural fields spotted throughout the entire place. There are even ponds to waterfowl hunt. However, I didn't see one piece of turkey sign. I saw plenty of deer, a fox, and tons of squirrels, but no red-headed thunder chickens. I checked numerous fields, pipelines, powerlines, and hardwood ridges and draws. Enthusiasm ran high as I stepped out of the truck, but with daylight waning and peepers peeping, tree frogs buzzing, I made the trek each night back to the truck with only the echoes of past birds gobbling in my head. As most could relate, each stump, grass clump, branch, downed tree, and rock looked like a turkey to me. The drive time and rediculously priced gas seemed worth it on the way down, but riding in the truck back to the house, I had to give my maps, calls, and motivation a little pep talk. Time and effort never seem wasted, but the nearly $2.00/gal of gas that I burned on the trip really got to me. Friends here have already killed birds, and one of them has killed a few. When I say killed, I don't me personally, but he was a part of the hunt. The guy he took out this morning killed his first turkey ever, an 11+" beard with hooks just shy of 1.5"! He had 8 or so birds gobbling around him this am, and he has already had mornings with over 10 birds within earshot. I am struggling to just find a track or a feather, and it's starting to piss me off. I'm not pissed at him, or anyone for that matter. I am pissed at the fact that I can't find a place to hunt. Sure, I can go to the state land, and park in a parking area with three other trucks, and just get bumped around all morning. The one place I wanted to hunt on Thompson WMA near the house had 4 cars parked at 10:30am on opening day last weekend, and it was real shitty out, raining hard, wind was whipping, and the fog up there made it difficult to walk down a trail. What would make me go up there on a decent day? I haven't "hunted" Phelps yet, but I plan to in the AM. I will not be the least bit surprised to find a bunch of vehicles camped out at each of the parking areas. I don't know what I am going to do then, maybe I'll just give up again. There is a lot of nice land surrounding the state land, but I think I learned my lesson tuesday about that. I was up near Thompson WMA asking permission from a farm where I had spotted a flock on Saturday on my return trip from the state land. The guys name was Eugene Bedell, seemed like a good 'ol farmer name! It seemed better than the Mr. Vanderbilt, Dr. Mellon, or any of the other uppity, old money, estate owners that I've asked in the past. Well, as I pulled up the driveway the Princeton and Harvard stickers on the back of his SUV were shining in the sun like big NO TRESPASSING signs. I approached the door, didn't get an answer, and proceeded to the tenant house at the beginning of the driveway. The mexican lady that answered the door said he would be back later and that she doesn't think he has anyone hunting the land. Well, I called him on Tuesday night, and he said he had a bunch of guys that have been workind on the farm for years that hunt it and that he can't let me hunt. He said, "those guys work so that they can hunt here", then started laughing and said, "you don't work here, so you can't hunt". My mind said, "Prick", but my mouth said, "okay, thanks for your time." Bottomline here is......the majority of the people down here are just unbelievably unfriendly and the few that aren't are so hard to find, it almost makes it not worth it. I really hope that this spring and summer all these people who don't allow hunting on their land spend thousands of dollars on repairing or replacing their landscaping, and then when they leave the driveway, I hope they drive their shiny, expensive car, right into the side of a male deer. that way, they get screwed with fixing the car, hurting the animal, and they still wind up with the same increasing population of deer next year.