Turkey Hunting Day One: Close But Not Close Enough

Turkey hunting can be a damnable sport.   You get so excited with anticipation that when you go to bed the night before the hunt you can hardly get to sleep.   Then you toss and turn all night with one eye peeled at the clock…IS IT TIME YET???!!!   Then suddenly the alarm goes off for 4am and you pop out of bed with lots of energy ready to take to the woods.   The only problem is…by the end of the day the sleep deprivation starts to catch up with you and for most of the afternoon you aren’t worth a crap.   Know what I’m talking about?

Well, welcome to turkey camp.   Where the days are long and the nights seem way too short.   And sometimes the action in the woods can be downright boring followed by an immediate rush of adrenaline that will knock your socks off.   Talk about a sport that can put you on an emotional roller coaster.   No doubt about it…turkey hunting is not a sport for folks with weak hearts.

This morning I headed to the woods with my good friend, Todd, as we shared a hunting blind together.   In many ways it was a strange morning…because the woods was completely devoid of any turkey sounds until around 8:00am.   Then off in the distance (about 350 yards away) Todd could make out the faint image of a turkey that seemed to be inching closer.   Turned out to be a hen.

I then pulled my secret weapon out of my pocket at about 8:20am.   What kind of a call did I grab, you wonder?   None other than a granola bar.   Indeed, the surest way I’ve learned to call up some turkey action is to begin eating on a snack…and once again that technique did not fail me.   I no more than got the wrapper peeled back and I heard Todd whisper, “I’ve got one coming this way.”   Turns out the bird was a hen…but where there’s a hen one can always hold out hope that a tom might not be too far away.   We were right…suddenly in sight was a bearded bird running straight across the field at a distance of about 150 yards away.

I let out some moderately soft yelps from my mouth call and the big boy stopped almost dead in his tracks.   He then began to fan out his tail (this is the actual picture of what we were seeing) and he took a look our way.   He must have seen our flock of decoys because he started inching closer and gobbling up a storm.   I was starting to think this is going to be way too easy…but then the hen who was with him started poking around amidst our decoys.   I stopped calling for fear she would pinpoint our location and then blow our cover.

The darned hen spent the next 1 1/2 hours within 40 yards of our blind.   When I curtailed my calling because of her close proximity, soon the tom lost interest and darted from the field back into the woods.   Wouldn’t you know it…just when things were looking quite promising this turkey proved that if we wanted a crack at him we would have to do a better job to earn it. 

This little game of calling and the gobbling response went on for the next two hours with the bird getting no closer than about 100 yards away in the woods.   I commented to Todd that this ol’ boy was so horny that I think one of us could pass some gas loudly and the tom would likely gobble in direct response.   Seriously!   And that was perhaps the only unorthodox calling trick we did not use to coax him our way.

In the meantime, I was hoping the hen that was hanging near our blind would somehow work to our benefit…but such was not the case.   After she checked out the decoys she just pecked away at the field about 20 yards in front of us for quite a long time.   I was sort of hoping she would vacate the area…but then she decided to sit down and laid right on the dirt field with her wings spread out.

A short time later, and after I resumed calling again, this obnoxious bird decided to walk around our blind to further check things out.   I was exchanging clucks with her and she could not quite figure out what was going on.   At one point she walked within about 10 feet of the blind so I lifted my camera to take a few shots at her (figuring these are the only legal shots she would offer during this spring season).   Here are the results:

Tomorrow morning I’ll be back in the turkey woods with my other hunting partner, Mike.   We have some different strategy to employ because the tom obviously wants to play hard to get.   A different day sometimes has a way of turning out with vastly different results when it comes to turkey hunting.   At least, that’s the attitude one needs to take with him to the woods, doesn’t he? 

2006 Jim Braaten. All Rights Reserved. No Reproduction without Prior Permission.