There aren’t many days left of the 2012 general turkey hunt here in Utah, but this morning the Weasel, Conner and I are off to see if we can out wit one of those elusive gobblers.  We have been close to him in the past, but every time he has slipped through our grubby little fingers.  Maybe today he will make that fatal mistake and take a load of number 6’s in the head.

We have a plan!

Sneak in, set up, stay quiet and wait.

Well that all sounds great doesn’t it?  How can three guys, one old, one middle age and one 10 years old sneak in?  Perhaps we will walk in as if we were a small herd of cattle or a band of deer.  Once into our spot we can settle down and stop making the walking sounds humans are known for.

Ok, that part is figured out.  Now for the next…stay quiet…right!  Candy wrappers, shuffling cold feet, runny noses.  It’s no wonder turkeys figure out there is something up that they don’t want to go into that thicket of brush to investigate and if they do, they come through the nastiest of the nasty to peak around.  So, in order to get around all of the little noises, I will conveniently leave the granola bars back in the truck and only have some jerky in my pocket.  That should work.  Oh and a napkin for each of us to put in our pocket to wipe our noses.  Yesterdays rain should help with the rustling of the leaves under our cold feet.  Perhaps a few of those open, rub and hold hand warmers, that should do to calm the cold.

Wait.  Now that is the key!  Waiting can sometimes get very un-nerving, but in all my reading, the lessons told by our friend Tex-O-Bob last weekend and everyone who has ever killed a gobbler, they all point to patience as the one key to killing a gobbler.  I’m a guy who likes to run and gun.  See the bird and go get it.  Sitting in the cool of the morning waiting for the unknown bird to come slipping in…..I’m not sure about all of that.  But, we only have a few hours this morning to get it done, so perhaps we can pull it off.

Our wary gobbler friend has been slipping it to us the past couple of weeks and maybe today we can get closer for a shot.  His pattern is wider than our shotguns at 30 yards, but we know “about” where he likes to strut his stuff.  If we can get his interest up enough to peak into the place we plan to hide and see our decoy, he might decide he likes our little “Gretchen” and come closer for a lookee-see.  BOOM!

I’ll let you know how it plays out later.

Bears Butt

May 19, 2012

Later:

A beautiful morning!  There were a ton of people doing the same thing as we were, but no body got any shooting.  We did not see any turkeys today, but we did have at least two different toms gobbling.  Not a ton of gobbling, but enough to keep the interest up.  Had they been on their regular routine I think we would have been in the right spot!

I did have a small buck deer and a doe play with me.  He bedded down about 20 yards away and kept me from moving.  She came in about an hour later and bedded about 10 feet away.  When the winds began to swirl, both deer jumped up and decided I was not a friendly sort.  But then, they continued to try and figure out what I was.  They would turn their heads as if uninterested and then suddenly turn back to see if I was moving.  It was quite funny to watch.  Then they both just walked away.  I was glad to see them go because my butt was so sore from sitting without moving for over two hours.

A wonderful day in the woods.

Bears Butt

P.M. report