Monday May 29, 2006

Last night Bill and I went over and aquired permission from the guy who owns that nice field where our gobbler went yesterday morning. He initally said no, but upon further conversation agreed, since he was just a deer hunter and not a turkey hunter. He not only gave us permission for behind his house, but also up behind the sheep farm, where I have commonly heard birds, but never had permission to go in there. He actually gave us that permission right off the bat, not realizing we just wanted to turkey hunt. So, now the game was on. We had the three of us again this morning and we could surround him. Aaron and I took the breeder decoy up to the top of the new field and Bill went in from Chris's house and setup a little closer than Aaron and I did yesterday. He didn't gobble nearly as much this morning on the roost. He did gobble though. He also sounded like he was almost all the way down the hill and possibly across the street. I wasn't going to call this am, just as I hadn't yesterday, to preserve whatever comfort he had in the area he had been spending so much time in. Well, when I heard him so far off, I knew I had to do something. I started calling. He answered a bunch, not every time, but enough to keep me interested. He eventually started working his way up the woods towards us. He cut the distance pretty good, but wasn't very close when it comes to getting real excited. He eventually started moving off down the hill again. I walked over into the woods to try and coax him by moving my setup. Once in the woods, I realized that I was pretty close to Bill, I could hear him calling. I backed out and we used our radios to confirm the bird was moving down and that we should move in on him and setup again. We did, and he still moved off. Another long story short, he went across the road and the hunt was over. Bill picked us up back down on the road and told us how he had seen a few birds in the bottom of the field when he was walking out and decided to go back and give them a shot. In doing so, he may have spooked a bird, but he doesn't think so. He did see a big bird pick up and fly across the road from about 50yds from him. We headed back over towards Putnam's. On the way we couldn't pass up The Corner's, and this time there were no birds visible, besides the same hen that we've seen every day, in an adjacent property just pecking around in a field. However, I did find a gobbler's left primary feather on the road into the pond, so I know there is one in there somewhere. We didn't waste much time there. We wanted to be up and in position for the Putnam birds before the time we tangled with them yesterday, which was 8:30am. We were up there by 7-7:15 today, and we didn't get one rise out of anything up there. After that we drove back towards the spot where Jason had killed that jake on opening day, and there was a stutter in the same place where I had seen a bird right before Jason and I went in. We did the same thing, minus the calling through the woods thing, and we just ran down the edge of the woods to minimize noise. It's hard with three people to be quiet. We got into position, with Bill on the calls behind Aaron and I. Bill's first yelps on the box call brought a distant gobble, and then silence. I thought a I had heard another gobble when he made his second call on the box, but I wasn't 100% sure. He kept switching back to his slate, so picked up my box call to see if I could make something happen. I clucked, yelped, cutt, yelped, and cutt. As I lowered my hands, I was almost shocked to hear a cutt, cluck, cutt come from in front of me, close too! I slowly dropped my box call between my legs, box first, then paddle, and grabbed my gun. Sure enough, seconds later a hen came clucking and cutting all the way in. She got to about 35yds and looked around and walked off. I thought the stutter we had seen would be right with her, so I fired up my diaphram to get her back. Like a puppet on a string, she came yelping and cutting right back. Still no gobbler, and nothing for her to see, she walked off yet again. This time we moved up to the field, put out a hen deke, and tried again. We never heard anything else. On to the next spot. As we were nearing the end of the road, we were going to turn and head down to Sausage Hill to see if that bird had made it back out to the fields. Before we got to the end of the road however, we spotted a real nice redhead with two hens just getting ready to cross the road, on the same farm where we just were. The terrain is pretty open, but there were two main woodlots he could have been heading towards. So, instead of left to "the hill" we went right and tried to sneak into the back of one of those woodlots. On the way over to the woods, crossing a big open field, we spooked a couple turkey's but didn't care much since we had a real nice one in our sights. Once we got to the edge of the woods, I glassed for a few minutes to see where they were going, and I watched them walk right back across the road and into the thin strip of pines that we could see right through. The only way to get at that bird was to go back to the end of the road, and get below him in this big ravine and try calling him down. Everything up top was way too open to move in on him. Well, we went down there and spent the remainder of legal hunting down there, without a single peep from those damn birds! I still have two more days, and something has to happen quick. I was going to go back to Rochester today and hunt with my dad in H-town, but he doesn't want me to waste the gas money to go hunt where the turkey hunting isn't as good. It doesn't matter much to me, I'd much rather see my dad, and possibly kill a bird with him, than hunt without him and not kill anything. The problem is, there are definitely birds here and I have a lot more land, and I only have two days left, and dad would have to work both days, and, and, and.... you get the idea. I don't know what to do, but financially I think I am better off just staying put here for the next two days. I know, I never think about money, especially when it comes to hunting, but dad isn't too optimistic about the hunting situation up there, and I know he has to work. I also feel like I need to give a little back to my old landlord, who puts me up in his own house every turkey season and treats me like one of the family. Very few people would do what this family does for me, and I can't think of a really good way to show them how much I appreciate it. I cook them dinner every once in a while, but that doesn't do it. If I could get Aaron a bird, I know he would be very happy, and that would take some of that pressure off. Don't get me wrong though, it's a little hard to justify my weekly trips up here to everyone in VA when I don't come back with anything. They all think I'm nuts, but truth be known, I just can't help it. If I had to choose one thing to do the rest of my life it would be turkey hunting. Some people golf, some people fix cars, some people drink, dance, play sports, have family's........I hunt. I hunt everything, but I find myself thinking of turkey hunting no matter what my target is that day. I was just talking about it this weekend, how I was sitting in my treestand one day this past fall wishing I could call deer like I do turkey's. An hour later I grunted in the biggest bow buck of my life, and as I watched him drop in that field, I was extremely happy, but I also thought about how excited and happy I get when I'm turkey hunting. I'll figure it all up from my receipts when it's all said and done, but it's looking like $1100 in gas, $100 in hotels, $200 in food, and about 65hrs of drive time since April 29th. Some may say I have a problem, but there are much worse things to spend your time and money on. At least with this, I stay healthy, have fun, enjoy the company of friends and family, and make memories that last a lifetime! Oh yeah, tomorrow, Aaron and I are headed back up to go after the gobble head roosting below Sausage Hill, but we are going to sneak right into the woods and get right in his strut zone where he was walking this morning. We went up to roost and watching him cut into the woods right in the same spot as this morning, still flanked by his 5 hens.