Hunting Date: April 15, 2014
Dolf texed me a picture of a group of Turkeys in his back
yard on the ranch and said, "Let’s get out there and make a hunt." Well, that was all I needed to hear. I was
ready to go.
I laid out my gear. Got my calls together and sorted out my camo gear and snake boots.
I have a great old friend, my Mossberg 12 gauge over and
under shotgun. I wrapped it with camo
tape and loaded the truck for the hunt.
I headed to the ranch for a 5am hunt. Dolf was there ready to go. We loaded the 4 wheeler and began our search for some birds. This was a Stalk Hunt, no Pop-Up Blind needed. We used a technique of driving around, stopping, waiting a few minutes, and I began with a yelp call from a hen box call. We listened for a reply by some Gobblers. At first, nothing, so we kept moving.
On our third stop, we had Gobblers call back just to the
west of us. We hid the 4 wheeler, set
up the Hen decoy I brought, and tucked ourselves into a tree-line for cover. I had a big Oak tree covering me, and Dolf
was on the HD camera ready to video.
I began calling when we were in position. They called back. Nice !! Almost immediately, within 5 minutes, a group of 5 BIG Toms were coming
in down an alley-way just in front of us. Game on !!!
Well, we thought it was Game On ! They would call back but they got “Hung
Up.” They did not like what they
saw. They came in but would not come to
the decoy or come close enough for a shot. I think that they saw us or saw something they did not like. Then they moved off back down the alley
way. Darn it ! It looked great. Oh well. We loaded up the 4 wheeler and went back out there stalking.
The next stop was the money. We had birds call back, and we set up
quickly. The key here was this great
big old brush pile. We set up behind
it -- Dolf in the Directors camo chair on
the HD camera and me on a small portable hunting camo chair, my calls to my
right and my gun on my lap. We were
ready.
I began to call with a slate. I made a purr and some puts and of course a
great yelp. "Arr, Arr Arr." The Toms responded. Okay, we’re “On” again.
Like before, the Birds were in front of us almost immediately. Oh man, here they are. I asked Dolf if he was rolling video, and he said “ I’m Recording.” Sweet. Okay, the Hen decoy was on our side of the barbed wire fence. No
worries though -- Dolf’s property is on both sides of the fence.
This was it. No
time to wait, these birds were going left to right and did not seem interested
in the decoy. They were all strutting,
6 or 7 of them all puffed up.
I told Dolf, I’m going to take the shot. He said “Go For It.”
I raised my old trusty Mossberg, kept both eyes open and
shot for the Big Tom in front of the group. They were tight to each other and strutting Big. One was down and I had to snake through the
fence to get him. That I did. We saw another bird hurt but he was
gone. We shot video of the downed Tom
and then began our search for the second Tom. We found him. Sweet. Two Tom’s with one shot. Amazing !!
This was my first Rio Grande Tom that I called in and
shot. To get 2 was simply awesome.
Hunting Tip Of The day:
Today’s hunt came to together because we had the cover of
the brush pile. That made is great. Dolf and I were behind this big pile of grey
old Brush that was cut down years back. In my opinion, it proved to be the reason this hunt worked out. These birds could not see us. I shot just over the brush pile and Dolf’s head
and Camera on the tripod was just above the brush. Cover was the trick on this hunt.
Two Toms with one shot. That probably won’t happen again, but we can always try for it next year.
Thanks for your time today and “I’ll See You in The Wide
Open Outdoors !!"
Dave
