Winchester1300TurkeyHnter
05-11-2007, 10:00 PM
Well my season is over. I have to work the rest of this week and the Indiana Turkey season goes out this Sunday. Wow, what a bad season. It seemed like two weeks before season they were gobbling, but a few days before season it got real cool and rainy and it just shut them up. I tried to take off work this two weeks of season, but it seemed like everyone got sick and I had to come back to work. I only got 4 days to hunt.
There was only one day where I had a great hunt with no bird. Here's the story.
Well, thought I should post since I haven't in a while on this thread. My first time getting out was Saturday the 28th. My good buddy from high school and I met up with another friend and went to a summer wheat field. We got in there and we had gobblers all around us gobbling their heads. My two friends and I were all calling back and forth trying to sound like a bunch of hens. We had 4 hen decoys out and two jakes. We sat there and heard the long beards fly down, but they soon changed direction and shut their mouths up and never made any more gobbles.
Now this is where the story gets fun. So read!!! Most exciting hunt I ever been on.
Gil (my best friend) and I went to a piece of state ground, its a pretty hidden secret, because its between two privatly owned fields. This place is a valley, with two big ridges leading to the fields. We got down there and stopped for a rest, because we walked for a good mile and two. We stopped and he got out his mouth call and I got out my slate call. He started clucking and I made some purrs, we heard a gobble about 100 yrds or so away from us. We started to walk down the ridge and got into a creek bottom. This was real thick in the valley. We got down there and set up because they sounded like jake was gobblin to us. After a while nothing showed up. So we got up and started to move very low and slow down throw the creek. We were getting wet from the creek cause we were crawling through there. We got closer and could see a tom's big struttin fan. We got into positioned but we found out the bird was real young, he was by himself. We started to call to him away, but he never gobbled. After a couple purrs from my slate call we found out why the young gobbler wasn't gobbling to us. A loud long gobble came out of two big boss gobblers. These birds were old because they had a low groan in their gobbles. When they gobbled to us, all the other Tom's in the woods let loose. We couldn't see the two boss toms, but they were probably about 100 yrds away from us. We counted 9 gobbles in one series of gobbles. We looked up on the ridge and saw 12 hens walking up the ridge. We were trying to itimidate the hens and make them come to us, but they were headed to their nests. After about 10 minutes of no gobbling we decided to go after the two big boss toms, which were with all the 12 hens. We got going up the hill and we heard two birds fighting, we both dropped like marine snipers. We then belly crawled 200 some yrds up this rocky hillside. It sucked, but exciting as heck. We got up to where we heard the birds fighting and I stood up slowly and then dropped right back down. I said to my buddy which was only 30 feet away from me that I seen two hens and the two boss gobblers. He slowly raised up to see where they were but never saw them. I switched camos this year to Realtree AP and my budyd could see me in the thick brias at only 30 feet away. This camo rocks. He told me there wasn't any birds up there and we argue a little as we both stood up and then suddenly he dropped real quick and said long beard, I was mad because I dropped first and told him about the birds. The birds never saw us, and my friend had a good 40 yrd shot on them, but never took the shot. The birds moved on and that was the end of our hunt.
We went hardcore on these Toms, even though we came out empty handed
There was only one day where I had a great hunt with no bird. Here's the story.
Well, thought I should post since I haven't in a while on this thread. My first time getting out was Saturday the 28th. My good buddy from high school and I met up with another friend and went to a summer wheat field. We got in there and we had gobblers all around us gobbling their heads. My two friends and I were all calling back and forth trying to sound like a bunch of hens. We had 4 hen decoys out and two jakes. We sat there and heard the long beards fly down, but they soon changed direction and shut their mouths up and never made any more gobbles.
Now this is where the story gets fun. So read!!! Most exciting hunt I ever been on.
Gil (my best friend) and I went to a piece of state ground, its a pretty hidden secret, because its between two privatly owned fields. This place is a valley, with two big ridges leading to the fields. We got down there and stopped for a rest, because we walked for a good mile and two. We stopped and he got out his mouth call and I got out my slate call. He started clucking and I made some purrs, we heard a gobble about 100 yrds or so away from us. We started to walk down the ridge and got into a creek bottom. This was real thick in the valley. We got down there and set up because they sounded like jake was gobblin to us. After a while nothing showed up. So we got up and started to move very low and slow down throw the creek. We were getting wet from the creek cause we were crawling through there. We got closer and could see a tom's big struttin fan. We got into positioned but we found out the bird was real young, he was by himself. We started to call to him away, but he never gobbled. After a couple purrs from my slate call we found out why the young gobbler wasn't gobbling to us. A loud long gobble came out of two big boss gobblers. These birds were old because they had a low groan in their gobbles. When they gobbled to us, all the other Tom's in the woods let loose. We couldn't see the two boss toms, but they were probably about 100 yrds away from us. We counted 9 gobbles in one series of gobbles. We looked up on the ridge and saw 12 hens walking up the ridge. We were trying to itimidate the hens and make them come to us, but they were headed to their nests. After about 10 minutes of no gobbling we decided to go after the two big boss toms, which were with all the 12 hens. We got going up the hill and we heard two birds fighting, we both dropped like marine snipers. We then belly crawled 200 some yrds up this rocky hillside. It sucked, but exciting as heck. We got up to where we heard the birds fighting and I stood up slowly and then dropped right back down. I said to my buddy which was only 30 feet away from me that I seen two hens and the two boss gobblers. He slowly raised up to see where they were but never saw them. I switched camos this year to Realtree AP and my budyd could see me in the thick brias at only 30 feet away. This camo rocks. He told me there wasn't any birds up there and we argue a little as we both stood up and then suddenly he dropped real quick and said long beard, I was mad because I dropped first and told him about the birds. The birds never saw us, and my friend had a good 40 yrd shot on them, but never took the shot. The birds moved on and that was the end of our hunt.
We went hardcore on these Toms, even though we came out empty handed