Turkey day once again!  This morning it is time to take Hot Spark out and try and get her a bird.  Weasel is going to set her up in his usual spot while I will be about where Conner and I were on Saturday.  Yesterday Weasel and Squirrel didn’t have the fortunate luck to have the birds drop in on them from the roost and so, we are hoping today will be the day!  One thing I have learned about turkey hunt is this….They don’t do what you think they will do….EVER!

We have had a lot of lessons in the past, both from people who have hunted turkeys their whole lives and have hundreds of kills under their belts and the birds themselves.  Each lesson adds to our volumns of “how to get it done” book, but how many have we put on the table?  One from my first ever hunt in Missouri and one last year for Weasel.  I have taken two shots at birds that busted me sitting in my blind and we have had a bunch of birds tease us from “close but too far to shoot”.  Turkeys!  Someone sure named them right.

So, here it is, 3 a.m., I’m driving and taking Tracker (videographer), Weasel, Hot Spark and myself.  3 guns and a camera.  We will be covering two different, but close areas and hope the birds like what we have in store for them.  My shell of choice, per popular vote….Head Hammer!

More to come later!  For now it is a cup of coffee and load the wagon time!  For all of you heading out on this, the first day of the general Utah turkey season…I wish you luck!

Bears Butt

May 4, 2015

UPDATE:

Boy did 2:30 a.m. come quickly!  But with a cup of coffee in me I was packed and ready to go pick up the rest of the gang!

Whatever happened to grabbing your gun and heading out?  Those days are long gone I’m afraid!  Gotta have the gun, shells, hydration pack, goodies to eat, a bi-pod gun holder, blind, Decoys, calls….and the list goes on and on.  Depending on who is going that could weigh the pack down significantly.

We got away a bit behind schedule but we made up for that on the other end.  We hurried from the truck down the trail to our hideout spots!  But not before I got a cool pic of Weasel and Hot Spark with the full moon shining behind them.

They went their way and I went mine.  Our goal was to kill 3 turkeys this morning.  The air was crisp and there was some heavy dew (rain) on the plants and the ground was sticky and slick, but that just made it more quiet to sneak in.

Once I was set in my natural materials blind I decided to take a couple of pics before I settled in to wait until the morning light.

There is “Hammer Head”, my shell by vote!  The black bag is my soft cushion I picked up at D.I. for a buck.  My slate call handy.  Hydration pack with the spigot ready.  Now to just settle in and wait.

My view is a very good one and any turkey that comes my way will be well within shotgun range by the time he can see me.  I’ve got this one!

So, the morning light came.  The deer went past my position pretty much all morning long and only saw the decoys I had out in front of me.  The gobbler was roosted right where he was on Saturday and unfortunately for us, we had other hunter company.

Let me ask you this:  You are hunting along, doing everything right and expecting to fill your turkey tag any minute.  You have heard the repeated gobbles of a gobbler still on the roost.  Suddenly in front of you is another hunters blind and decoy.  What do you do?

What I would do is say to myself….Crap….and turn my butt around and high tail it back the way I came.  Hoping I hadn’t busted things up for the hunters in the blind.

Well folks…our two guest hunters continued right on down the trail past the three blinds (Weasel and Hot Sparks, Trackers (videographer) and mine.  Happy guys for sure.  Ya, they were quiet, but still, WTF!  Just sayin.

OK, they got past us before the fly down.  But was it them that caused the birds to do what they did today?  I don’t know.  The birds came off the roost and stayed high on the hill, proceeding up out of the trees and over the top.  Feeding away like nobodies business.  The Tom was strutting his stuff all the way up and over, but I noticed something, I could still see his tail all fanned out, when what to my surprise (NOT) our two guest hunters standing about 100 yards away from them on the skyline!  Waiving arms and suggesting to each other how great they were and what a wonderful land they were hunting in.  The birds came back on our side of the hill and launched in full flight down and over to the East.  Thanks guys for sending them back our way, sort of.

OK, we aren’t done yet.  When I first saw the turkeys heading up and over the top, I quickly abandoned my post and ran to Weasel and Hot Spark and suggested they get up and head to a spot up the draw to cut them off.  I figured they would travel a similar route to the one they used on Saturday.  Then I booked it back to my spot and nestled back in.  That is when the two dudes showed up on the ridge and sent the birds in the opposite direction of Weasel and Hot Spark.  Nothing was working in our favor.

Well, as time went on the gobbler was separated from his hens and trying to relocate them.  I thought for sure I had a chance to call him in.  He came a ways, but then got back with his 3 hens and went off in the direction they wanted him to go….away from me.

Weasel and Hot Spark tried to get in front of where they thought the turkeys might go, but they didn’t know about the dudes on the ridgeline and the fact that the birds flew down East.  They finally worked their way back to their blind and settled in.

ENTER HUNTER NUMBER 3!

A lone dude, sneaking and calling, sneaking and calling.  He saw the blinds!  He continued on down the trail sneaking and calling!  Weasel even whispered to him “Have you seen any turkeys today”?  The guy looked at him and went right on by without a word!  Then he stopped his travel about 50 yards down hill and turned around and went back up past the blinds!!!!!!!   OMG!  (I like the acronyms!)

We kept our heads.  After all it’s the opening day of Utah’s general turkey season.  We are on ground that is pretty good for holding turkeys.  It isn’t easy to hunt, but still fairly close to a lot of hunters AND what the heck, we are a sharing bunch who like to chat with other hunters when we get the chance!  Why didn’t they stop in and share our blinds with us?  Share a cup of coffee or a trail snack?

Well, the morning hunt went just like that and so we packed it up and decided to get out of there before we busted someone else’s hunt.

The decision was made to take a ride up toward Hardware Ranch.  We have seen turkeys up there before…and off we went!

On the way we saw this tree that will someday not be standing and decided to take a picture or two of it….Beaver Sharn!

It’s a big old tree and when it goes down it will hit the highway!  I hope nobody is coming down the road when it happens!

So, we go up past Hardware and decide to take a hike.  Move slowly, call every 50 to 100 yards and hope we can get a gobbler to sound off.  Hot Spark is going to take the shot.  Weasel will do the calling.  So, up the trail we go!  About a half mile into it, we are on a call spot, Hot Spark is ready and in the lead next to a corner in the trail.  If a gobbler hears the call and comes running down the trail she will be on it like stink on you know what.  Weasel sounds off with a soft yelp.  Hot Spark jumps up from her position and runs down the trail past Weasel and then past me.  She is not a happy girl!  What is going on?  SNAKE!!!!!  Sure enough, there was a rattle snake crossing the trail just in front of us….it was at least 3 feet long and maybe even 4 feet long.  12 solid buttons on the rattles and big and round.  This baby would make a fine belt for a guy the size of Fat Duck!  Or any of the Hurd Brothers for that matter!

These pictures don’t do it justice, but it was a HONKER of a snake!

Tracker got some good video of it and all the buzzing it was doing.  I’ll have to hear it once he posts something up cuz I can’t hear crap.  I only barely heard it once and we hung around it for at least 10 minutes while it tried to scare us off.  Hot Spark was easy for it to scare off, the rest of us weren’t as bright as her.

Well, that ended our turkey hunt and we headed down the trail leaving old mister buzz worm to find his next prey.

All in all I’d say we had a pretty good day.  Saw a Gobbler, saw lots of deer, saw a snake….YA!  It was good!

Bears Butt