The turkey season is officially underway.

Weasel and I had planned to leave town at 4 a.m. for our one hour drive to the hunting area.  We add to that a half hour to hike to the hunting spots and get set up.  We figured it would get light about 6 a.m. and there is nothing worse than still be hiking into the hunting area when the birds are awake.  So this plan will work.

I arrived at Weasels at 3:55, I figured we needed the 5 minutes to get his stuff loaded up….his house was dark….Oh Oh!  So I texted his cell phone….no response.  Next I hit the house phone figuring the noise it makes would wake them up, if they were still asleep….It rang, a light came on and a very tired sounding Weasel voice answered like…”The alarm didn’t go off, give me time to make a cup of coffee and put my clothes on, I’ll be right out….click”.  At 4:15 we were on our way….well almost, we had made it about 2 blocks when Weasel said, “Turn around, I forgot my juice”!

In this case his juice is the stuff he puts in his binky…I mean his e-cig thingy.  So back we went.  He was very quick and once again we were on our way….4:20!  Oh well, what are plans for if you can’t break them sometimes.

We arrived in perfect order at the hunting area and found that we were the only ones there!  Great!  We love a whole mountain to ourselves, especially turkey hunting.  We made the quick hike to our blinds and got set up.  It was cold and it had skiffed a bit of snow during the night.  The sky was also very dark and it began to snow on us again.  The ground was saturated and the clay in that part of the country is unforgiving as it packs tightly in the cleats of your boots making them very slick…if you fall on your butt, your butt will become very slick too.  Have you ever had clay packed in your butt cheeks?  It ain’t real fun.

Weasel and I arrived at his blind and with a quick hand shake and “good luck”, I was on my way down to my blind about 300 yards away.  My head lamp is not too good but I made it safely and didn’t fall down once.  I felt good about that.

When you have waited a year for the turkey season to begin, you think of all sorts of things you need to do and NOT to do.  Weasel wanted to take a picture of his view from his blind, but he also wanted not to disturb the birds on the roost, so he took this picture (I enhanced it to be able to see “something”)

That stick looking pointing thing and lower X is his shotgun leaning against his shooting sticks.  The lights way out are from the homes in the valley below.  My blind is just under the far left light….wayyyyyy over there in the scary part of the mountain.

I had to make some quick adjustments to my blind or the birds would see me for sure.  A whole year of being beaten by the weather had pretty much destroyed it, but it didn’t take too much time to get it up enough to hide behind.  Still some work was needed, but it was getting light and I needed to be very quiet. This is my view.

As I sat there in the early morning the birds began chirping in the trees around us…first the robins, and then the smaller birds, then a far off crow, and a pheasant  and then what we came for….GOBBBLE GOBBBLE GOBBBBBLE!  (Turkeys spell their gobble with 3 or more B’s depending on the candence).  Before long I distinctly heard the voices of at least 5 different long beards down the hill below us.  My adrenaline was beginning to build.  It did not matter that is was blowing snow into my face nor did it matter that the temperature was right at freezing.  I was hunting turkeys and they were right below us.  It was going to be a very favorable day in the field.

From my vantage point I could see the vehicle sitting way off in the distance and higher in altitude than we were.  I could also see other vehicles traveling the road.  Some of them stopped next to our rig and it was obvious they wished they were where we were, or at least that they could find a turkey.  They would sit there obviously glassing the hills for signs of gobblers.  Some even got out and sounded off with their calls, trying to get a gobbler to answer back.  The birds were being quiet for those folks, but we knew where they were and that we were in “the” spot!

About an hour after sunrise, the birds started to make their alarm sounds, a sound of “putting” and the whole flock was doing it.  When a turkey putts like they do, it means Danger to them all, and they usually scatter in all directions.  And even though we did not see them, we made that assumption as there were very few gobbles after that and the ones we did hear were distant.  But, being died in the wool turkey hunters we sat still and patiently waited for the big one to appear.  They are cautious critters, and move slowly and deliberately, listening and looking for signs of danger….ALWAYS!  People say they can see a hunters eye lashes  and hear that same hunters heart beating and that if a turkey could smell they would never get shot.

As the hours ticked slowly by, the wind began to pick up with a fury.  I’d guess in the 20 mph range and it was about all a guy could stand to sit there knowing the birds would rather be on the down wind side of the hill….certainly not where we were.  It was four hours after first getting sat down that Weasel got up and came down to discuss our strategy.  The obvious decision was to get off the windy ridge.

We hunted slowly down toward where we had heard the turkeys and the wind was very mild down in that “holler”….suddenly I saw a turkey lift off the ground and fly low down and away from us….DANG!  We are very good at getting busted by these birds.  Had we seen him before he saw us, we might have been able to set up and call him up to us, but NOOOOO.

And so we began working our way back up toward the truck, stopping every couple hundred yards, setting out the decoy and calling, hoping beyond hope a gobbler would either sound off or come running in.  Neither of those things happened.

So, there you have our first day scoop.  It was a fun outing and we did get to see a Great Horned Owl standing over its nest of little ones.  Most people don’t ever get to see that in their lifetimes.  We were blessed.

Bears Butt

April 28, 2014