Success! & a close call.

We get to turkey ridge and Kyhl and I head to the field. Just about at the field I do my best bard owl hoot. Right away two toms gobble about one hundred and fifty yards away. This is going to get good I tell Kyhl. We make our way into the field and look for the best place to get set up. It is getting light out fast. I stick Wilma out in the field at fifteen yards and scramble back into the brush. Kyhl is set up just in front of me and to the right. He has a good view of the field. I get my bow all set up with my bow sticks and dig my calls out.
I grab my slate pot call and do a few yelps and clucks. They both gobble again. They know we are here.

I look at my clock and it is 5:45am. We sit quiet for about ten more minutes and I call again. This time nothing. I get a little down. My brain just starts running a mile a minute. Did we make to much noise getting set up? Did my calling spook them? Maybe someone else is in here? So many possibility. I was convinced that they were gone. I let what feels like and hour go by and I grab my call again. Again a few light yelps and a cluck or tow. They hammer right at the end of the field. My heard skips a beat and Kyhl said he can see them. Three! and they are running at us. The first bird in was a big hen.

 She ran right up to Wilma and started pecking and kicking the crap out of here. Then the two jakes came in. One in full strut and the other is quarter strut. I tell Kyhl to kill the one in full strut. But to wait a second and see if I could get a shot off with my bow. Now we have a hen and Two jakes at fifteen yards. Both jakes are in full strut. spitting and drumming. All three are very interested in Wilma. I wait for the toms to turn away so their tail feathers block their view of me and draw my bow. I line up my top pin on the closest tome and squeeze my release trigger.
I watch the arrow hit the bird and hear the sound of the hit. All hell breaks loose. The bird I shot starts flopping like crazy. I tell Kyhl to kill the other tom and he throws the safety off the mossburg and pulls the trigger. The tom is still standing! get him again I said as he takes two more shots. The smoke clears and we watch the tom and hen fly away. Talk about some excitement. I look back at my clock and it is only 6:02am

We gather our selves and head out to have a look at the aftermath. I walk up to my turkey and he is dead. Hop down on my knees and take a closer look. This is the first tom I have killed with a bow. I tag my bird and snap a few pics. Find my arrow about twenty yards past the turkey.  I stash the bird along the road so I can grab it on the way out and Khyl and Igo after the one that got away.

We head in the direction the tom flew and set up and call. Nothing. The temperature is starting to rise so I would like to get my bird taken care of before the temps get into the high seventies

 One more set up. a little farther down the logging road and set up. Call a few times and nothing. Back to the car we go.



 Kyle wanted to see the check station process and cleaning of the animal.

He came in at 14lbs and had a 3.5 inch double beard.

Turkey Ridge.

After a few days of seeing nothing on the properties I had permission to hunt. Kyhl had one more farm we could go look at. This one looked good on the map. Had a 12 acre hay field smack dab in the middle of the woods. We quit hunting early and came back to my place and Kyhl gives them a call to see if it is okay if we stop by. The farm owner said "sure but I don't think we have many turkeys". The farm is a little over 400 acres. It takes about twenty minuets to get there from my house. We arrive at the farm and chat a bit with the property owner and his kids. He grabs a map for us and sends us on our way. The hay field is our first stop. Looks nice. Has a lot of clover. We made it about half way across the field and Kyhl said look, turkeys! I grab the binoculars and two jakes, a hen and one more I cant make out go running into the woods. Time to back out. Back at the road we debate on going back to the car and getting our shotgun and bow. But decide that looking around today is a bit more important.
After wandering around for an hour or so we decide we will be coming here in the morning.

2013 Spring Turkey

This year I had a partner in crime. My friend Kyhl had just finished his hunter ed class the week before spring turkey opened up. We decided that I would take my bow and he would carry the shotgun to improve his chances of bagging his first bird. I went out the night before opening day to roost a bird on out neighbors property. As I pull up into the field I notice a pickup truck parked in the field. So I hope out and see what is up. He is from up the road and said he is planning on hunting here in the morning. As we are chatting I can hear a tom gobbling on the side hill.That is when he said that there are two more people up there already.
I hung out a bit longer and chatted about what our plans were for the following day and decided I was going to head someplace else in the morning. The last thing I wanted to be in the middle of is five people all hunting the same bird on a small farm. I got home and called Kyhl and asked if he wanted to try out a new farm he had gotten permission to hunt a few weeks back. He said that it would be fine to head over there. I set my alarm for 3:30 and time to catch some Zzz's.


Opening day up and atom. Grab breakfast and throw everything in the car and take off to meet Khyl.
I have not been to this farm at all. Going in blind  always sucks. We make the long walk up the driveway and hit the fields. I spot a logging road that leads back into the woods and up the ridge a bit. The road ends at a steep drop into a big valley. This looks like as good as spot as any so we set the decoy on the road and get set up. We sit for about two hours and hear nothing and see nothing. Time to move. It has not rained in almost two weeks and the woods are very noise. Trying to sneak along the ridge we come to the property line and call and try and get something going but nothing.

We walk back down the road to the fields and set up there for two more hours and nothing again. We decide to call it a day at around eleven.