Spring 2023 Recap

Stories of your favorite gobbler hunts.
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bottomlandassassin
Posts: 22
Joined: March 23rd, 2015, 7:42 am
Location: Mississippi

Spring 2023 Recap

Post by bottomlandassassin »

Year after year, the end seems to taste just a little more bitter. Unpacking the truck, hanging up the vest, putting the gun in the safe, all of it brings a burning desire for “just one more”.

Each and every spring brings new beginnings, new memories, new experiences, triumphs, and a few old fashion butt whoopings. The following are some stories of the triumphs from spring turkey season 2023. I love a good story so I have made a conscious effort to sit down and do this over the last few seasons for my personal outdoor journal along with the hope to pass this down for others to enjoy one day. I hope you'll read and find pleasure in these stories as well!


Chapter1: Payden’s Hunt
Per Usual, the season started during the Mississippi youth season with my 14-year-old cousin. This young man is really starting grasp what I personally feel it takes to become a turkey hunter. Woodsmanship, patience, and a desire to learn from each and every moment are a few of my personal thoughts as to what makes or breaks those that are considered “killers”. This season, we kept the decoys put up and were going to attempt to get Payden his MS gobbler the way I prefer to hunt.
The first afternoon he got out of school for spring break, I picked him up shortly after 2:30pmfor his first hunt of the year. We got lucky and spotted a flock of turkeys working up a creek bottom headed in a favorable direction. We parked, made a loop around to get above the creek bottom we had seen the birds in, found an excellent hide, and began calling. It wasn’t long, we began to hear some hens answering our subtle yelping. As the hen’s got more excited, I followed their lead and turned up the volume a bit. Gobble! He acknowledged us and I felt that we had a good chance of enticing what would most likely be the entire flock into eyesight. A few moments went by as we sat in silence. We heard a second gobble much closer. My guess was inside 150. I instructed Payden to get his gun up and began to scratch in the heavy leaf litter with a few soft clucks, whines, and purrs. It wasn’t long before we could hear scratching and walking in the leaves just below the ridge crest and I knew we stood a very good chance at getting a shot within a few minutes. Hen after hen began cresting the top, thirteen hens altogether. Seconds later, drumming was deafening and I could see the top of a full fan easing our way. The gobbler came to the top and was 45 yards. A little further than I like to shoot them so we waited a few more seconds for the gobbler to close what I figured was 40 yards. At 3:21pm on March 10, 2023,
Payden had executed the plan perfectly and we were standing over a fine early season Mississippi long beard. This makes 3 years in a row for Payden to harvest a long beard during the youth season! What a way to start it off! Once we took time for pictures and a moment of reflection, I asked Payden what he learned from the hunt. He answered, “Try to stay above them, listen for more than just gobbling, and be patient.” As stated before, he is certainly beginning to learn how to play the game and I’m proud of that!
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Chapter 2: Myers’ Turkey
Myself and a group of buddies always kick the season off in a centralized location we use as “turkey camp”. We don’t actually have any sort of club but this camp is within a 30 minute drive of all of our properties so we’ve just started using this place as a basecamp for the opening weekend. We fry turkey, enjoy some libations (sometimes excessively) and just celebrate the spring turkey season.
Typically, I hunt with of my closest friends every opening weekend but this year was different. My wife and I were expecting our first child in November. Due to some complications, she was born at 23 weeks and only lived a few short hours. As you can imagine, this has been a devastating time for both of us along with our family and closest friends. I always wanted to be able to take those pictures you see of people holding their babies with a fanned out gobbler. I have yet to be afforded that opportunity so I really just wanted to get in the woods and hunt by myself. Killing one be damned, I just needed the therapy.
March 18, 2023 was a morning that will live with me for the rest of my time on this earth. 38 degrees at daylight, calm, and clear as a bell. This particular property was new to me. I had done some scouting but nothing extensive. As daylight broke, the woods woke up and this was one of the best gobbling mornings I had ever heard in my 16 year turkey hunting career. I was completely in awe. As lucky would have it, I went to a group of gobblers that were gobbling together only to be intercepted by what sounded like 100 hens! I think it was closer to 20 but you get the picture…. As the morning progressed, as typical in early season, the gobbling stopped. Around 8:30, I began to walk slowly and carefully along a ridge top casting calls every couple hundred yards. I call it the 150/15. Walk 150, call, sit for 15. It seems to work well for me. Especially early season when the woods are wide open. At 9:00, I struck a turkey 350 – 400 yards away. I cut the distance approximately 100 yards and sat against a giant white oak tree. I made another series of yelps on a trumpet and within minutes I could hear drumming. What seemed like forever was more like 5 minutes before this gobbler was within gun range. I let him keep coming to within 25 yards before I pulled the trigger. That can be a bit close for comfort at times but this was one of those “too perfect” moments and I was soaking it all in. I retrieved my gobbler and noticed his unique wings. As I sat for nearly an hour in the calm of the spring turkey woods, I couldn’t hold back tears thinking of how special this particular morning and this particular bird was. The first since her passing. This was Myers’ bird! A true blessing.
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Chapter 3: Afternoon Delight
The second Mississippi gobbler of the season came on the afternoon of March 21. I left the office around 3:00pm with blue bird skies, pleasant temps, and almost zero wind. I had to go hunting, right? I pointed the truck east to go try some ground I had yet to step foot on this year. For whatever reason, I decided to approach my intended destination from the opposite end I usually do. As I fall off into the bottomland hardwoods I noticed very fresh scratching with quite a bit of fresh droppings. I eased my way to the edge of the creek, leaned against a tree, and listened for several minutes. Without looking at my watch, I would say I had stood there for 10 minutes before I heard some soft yelping 150-200 yards to my north. I eased into the creek and began to ease in the direction of the yelping. I had walked 60-75 yards to a large oak that had recently been blown over in a storm. It made the perfect hide to ease back to the top of the creek bank. I crawled my way to the top and got to me knees to scan the area. Nothing was in eyesight so I began to call. A pair of gobblers answered with some jake caulking following. It was apparent I had peaked the entire flocks interest because the woods got rather noisy from that moment on. Several minutes of back and forth ensued before I could tell the gobblers were closing the distance towards me. The two gobblers put on one hell of a show strutting and gobbling for three or four minutes as they closed the distance towards me. At 5:41pm, my second MS gobbler was sitting against the tree with me.
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Chapter 4: Damn Yankee
The pursuit of the US Super Slam has afforded me a lot of special memories and unique opportunities. One of those opportunities meeting this man in spring of 2022 as I was chasing some states in the northeast. He and I ran into each other and being a local, pointed me in the direction that lead to success in two different states. He and I have talked on numerous occasions and have since become good friends. As spring 2023 drew near, he reached out and asked if I was willing to help him with a MS bird. Of course I was! Andrew arrived late Thursday night running on little to no sleep. I could not hunt Friday morning but dropped him pins and gave him the gate codes to a property I felt he could run around on until I could get off work. The weather was less than desirable so he was unsuccessful that morning.
I caught up with him around 2:00pm and we moved to the same property I had heard all the turkeys on the morning I killed my first gobbler early in the year. Andrew was running on fumes so with high winds, we decided to sit on a spine ridge for an hour and cast calls into the two bottoms the ridge separated. We had been sitting 30 minutes or so calling every 10-15 minutes. I heard a “growling” noise behind me. As I turned my head, I realized it was Andrew snoring. I grabbed my phone to video the moment so that I could poke fun at him later and as I did, I noticed something black and shiny moving in the woods. Three long beards were headed directly towards us. I woke Andrew and told him to point his gun at the 10:00 position. Seconds later, he saw the gobblers and shortly thereafter, had checked MS off the list! From sawing logs to blasting gobblers! Sometimes, you just get lucky, right?
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bottomlandassassin
Posts: 22
Joined: March 23rd, 2015, 7:42 am
Location: Mississippi

Re: Spring 2023 Recap

Post by bottomlandassassin »

Continued...

Chapter 5: Quality Time in the Alabama Turkey Woods
Next up was my annual trip with my grandfather to the great turkey state of Alabama. We are so fortunate to be able to hunt this particular property and we always have a great time spending a few days hunting together. He’s getting older and can’t get around nearly as well as he could before his battle with cancer. In remission now, he’s doing better but we have to hunt slow and do a lot of “deer hunting” as I like to call it.
Our second afternoon in camp, I yelped two gobblers into a chufa plot and he shot his bird at 5:37pm. Not much story to this one. Birds frequent this field and it produces year after year. We got in the field and set up around 4:00pm and did some blind calling from time to time. Again, right place right time but we enjoyed it nonetheless.
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Chapter 6: Revenge
My Alabama bird was a different story. This guy had given me fits for 2 mornings staying just outside of gun range in a freshly burned patch of pines. Our last morning in camp, I decided I would be close to him before he woke up. I snuck in early and got settled into a blow down. He began gobbling around 6:10am but really wasn’t gobbling like I would have expected given the weather conditions. There was a several minute span he never made a peep. I was beginning to worry but he gobbled again, this time he was on the ground and within 100 of me. I yelped and he cut me off with one of those gobbles that will make the hair on your arms stand up. I sat a minute for him to gobble again. As soon as he gobbled, I cut at him hard and loud. He really got going at that and it wasn’t long, I could hear drumming. To my surprise, it wasn’t just one, but four gobblers together running mach 10 directly down my gun barrel. This was one of those do or die instances as the lead gobbler was now less than 10 yards and the last being no further than 25. I beaded down on the back gobbler and connected at 6:50am on April 2, 2023. This one was intense!

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Chapter 7: Closing at Home
The following Tuesday, once again leaving work with beautiful weather, I decided I’d go hunt for a couple of hours before I needed to at dinner with my wife, parents, sister, and her family. I wasn’t exactly ready for my Mississippi season to be over to I decided I would carry the .410 and only shoot a turkey if he did it absolutely perfect. Well, here he is….. I parked at the gate with the intention of using my 150/15 method as mentioned early to loop around 3 different clover plots I’ve always messed with turkeys in or around. I left the truck at 4:15pm. I arrived to the first clover plot around 4:30 and sat for 15 minutes. As I was halfway between there and the next, I thought I heard a cluck. I froze in in my tracks and began to look and listen. As I strained my ears, I was swearing I could hear drumming up road from me. I dropped to the ground and eased my way to a pine tree just off the road. Not really where I wanted to me but I was working with the circumstance. I readied my gun on my knee and called very softly. He answered and I began thinking to myself “no way this is going to happen”. I called again and he answered once more but had not closed any distance that I could tell. I sat a few minutes waiting for him to gobble again. Five or so minutes had gone by so I clucked a few times. He answered, much closer! I couldn’t believe I was unable to see him!
As they’ll do, instead of walking the road, the had walked the edge just inside the woods and I had a line of trees blocking my view. He had to be inside 75 yards but wasn’t visible yet. Just a few seconds later, I caught a glimpse of him making his way to the road. He stepped out around 60 yards and danced his way to 30. As I said, it had to be perfect and it certainly was. At 6:00pm on April 4, 2023 my Mississippi turkey season had come to a close. The most bitter sweet feeling.
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Chapter 8: Dan the Duck Hunter
This next hunt was with a lifelong friend and one of my ride or die duck hunting partners. He claims to be a duck hunter but I could certainly make a strong argument for him being a turkey hunter after seeing his excitement and emotion before, during, and after a successful hunt the last couple of seasons. Daniel has been in medical school for the previous 4 years and is now in his orthopedic residency in Lansing, MI. He and I don’t get to spend much time together anymore so when he’s at home, we try and spend a lot of time together to make up for lost time.
This Easter Sunday I shot him a text around lunch to see if he wanted to make a loop around a property later that afternoon to see if we could run into one. We left the house around 3:00pm and arrived to our destination around 3:45pm. I had borrowed my grandfather’s electric cart and we had both cracked open a beer. This wasn’t intended to be a very serious hunt but it sure turned into one quickly.
Not too far down the main road leading from the gated entrance to the first clover field I began noticing very fresh tracks. I stopped the cart and sent a call from the glass pot call. Nothing. We moved a little further to just within eyesight of the edge of the far south end of the clover field. Called again. Nothing. I didn’t feel right driving past the field without getting my eyes on it so we parked the cart and dove off into the woods 35-40 yards hoping to use the shadows and greening vegetation to help hide us if there were in fact turkeys in the field. Sure enough, there he stood with 4 hens all the way in the corner of the “L” shaped field 225 yards from our current position. We picked our way carefully through the woods and crawled to within 150 yards from the flock before we made any calls. To make a long story short, they didn’t want to play the game and never even once acknowledged our presence. Eventually, they drifted into the woods north of us so we made our way back to the cart to continue the loop around the property.
By this time, it’s well into the 5:00 hour so we were trying to cover ground in a hurry. Personally, I don’t like to hunt any later than an hour before sunset just to allow the birds some time to ease back to roost and do their own thing. On this particular day, that meant we had until 6:30pm to make something happen. We were nearing the end of our loop with one last clover field to check. I told Daniel “we’re going to strike one here, just watch”. I tried some yelps on the mouth call at first then turned up the volume with the glass. Gobble! I gave him that “**** eating” grin you can imagine and we began our pursuit. We slipped 60-70 yards towards the direction of the gobbling and started the conversation. What we thought was one bird wound up being two. They gobbled in the same location as the original response for the next 10 minutes so I went silent for 10 minutes. After the first 6 or 7 minutes, they finally gobbled several times in a row and I told Daniel that this might be the trick. They went silent again. I told Daniel that the birds were either coming or going and that he needed to get his gun ready. I yelped on the mouth call and they cut me off no further than 75 yards. I instructed Daniel to move his gun left a bit and keep an eye out between his 9:00 -11:00. I could hear drumming and footsteps. They gobble again at 40 yards behind one last thicket. The pair appeared from behind a cane and briar thicket at 30 yards and Daniel laid the hammer on a dandy MS long beard. I cannot bring myself to type to explicit language that came from Daniel’s mouth once the gobbler had fallen but let me tell you, I’ve never seen him that excited over a limit of mallards and we have killed a lot of those together! This is two years in a row we’ve been able to have a successful hunt together.
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guesswho
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Re: Spring 2023 Recap

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Good times. Congrats.
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Chief Razor
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Re: Spring 2023 Recap

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Great read. Congratulations to you and your crew for a great season!
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Re: Spring 2023 Recap

Post by WAGinVA »

Looks like I need to get the Miller light concession in your area.
bottomlandassassin
Posts: 22
Joined: March 23rd, 2015, 7:42 am
Location: Mississippi

Re: Spring 2023 Recap

Post by bottomlandassassin »

Sorry for the gap in posts. Have had technical difficulties!

Chapter 9: New Friends
Road tripping has officially begun! As stated earlier, traveling has afforded me a number of special opportunities, meeting people being at the top of the list.
Eli and I met a few years back at an engagement party for my sister. He was dating a friend of my sister and happened to have been drug along to the party. He parked behind me and noticed my truck tag and my window decal. “Hey man, you turkey hunt?” he asked. With what I can only imagine was a smug look on my face, I answered, “yes sir, every chance I get.” We spent the rest of the evening sharing stories, telling lies, and talking turkey. We had hit it off and become friends but never really reconnected outside of the typical turkey season check ins and picture sharing.
The following spring, he and I were both in Starkville, MS for some Mississippi State Baseball so we decided we’d hunt together. He had a lease not too far outside of Starkville so we woke after staying up entirely to late and went hunting. That morning was very slow. I think we heard 1 turkey gobble all morning. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our time and came to realize that our philosophy around turkey hunting is wildly similar. We all have those hunting buddies that we’ve hunted with for years and you’ve learned and developed an almost instinctual thought process with. Eli and I had that connection from hunt number one. Again, living a couple hours apart, we don’t get to hunt much together but we made it a point this year to try and take a trip together.
Eli loves to chase bucks in the Midwest and has a gorgeous lease in Illinois. I had yet to hunt Illinois so he told me that if I drew a tag, we could go hunt his lease and try to add another if we had the time. As luck would have it, I drew an Illinois third season tag, which is when he suggested in hopes the hens would have begun nesting and gobblers would be willing to play. This was not the case…..
We arrived around sunset Thursday evening in time to roost birds. We split up and I was the only one of us that heard anything. One turkey gobbled one time over a rather large agriculture field. I hate field turkeys!
Being the only game in town, we snuck in early and got in tight to where I had thought the turkey was. We were off the “X” and as field turkeys do, he flew down, went 150 out into the middle of the field, and gobbled up a couple of hens before drifting away. We hunted hard until the 1:00pm cut off with no luck.
The following morning we went to a decent sized block of timber with a creek system running through the middle of it. We heard a few different birds but once they got on the ground, gobbling was sparse. After 7:30am, the gobbling pretty much quit altogether. We gave this particular piece another couple of hours before deciding to move to a different block. We made our way back to the truck, had a snack, and made the drive around. We walked in and got settled on top of one of the prettiest hardwood ridges I have seen. We sat and called periodically for the next 45 minutes before deciding to move one last time for the final hour of legal hunting hours. At 12:00pm noon, we struck a turkey several hundred yards from us. We cut the distance 100-150 yards and called again. He answered and the game was on. Eli dropped back 20 and I moved up 30-35 yards. The bird was gobbling frequently with very little calling. Clucks, purrs, and content yelps was all I was giving him. Once I guessed the turkey to be within 150, I signaled to Eli to begin scratching leaves and calling in hopes to pull the gobbler within gun range of my position. It wasn’t long I saw the gobbler top the ridge across from us and drop into the bottom headed out direction. He had stopped gobbling but was drumming hard enough; I could feel it in my feet. He was coming quickly and I readied my gun as he got out of eyesight. I could pinpoint footsteps in the leaf litter so just as he got to the top to peak over the crest and look our direction, I was beaded down. At 12:30pm, an Illinois hardwood monarch had been laid to rest! State 21.
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Chapter 10: Pure Luck
Following the celebration, we headed back to camp to pack our bags and point the truck towards another state. We had absolutely zero idea about the properties we had discussed driving to during our planning of this trip but we were going regardless.
We arrived late Saturday evening with a severe thunderstorm rolling in so there was no hope of putting boots on the ground or roosting birds. We drove around for a couple of hours before dark just to get a feel but didn’t really see anything we were in love with from the roads. At dark we drove back to the nearest town, got a hotel room, and called it a night early as we knew we’d need to be parked and moving early.
The next morning, we arrived at the gate around 3:45am but were beat. We kept moving, parked at the next gate, and studied the maps a bit more. We both agreed we could still get to the area we wanted but it would take a little more “want to”. We left the truck at 4:05am, stars were out, and the temperature reading 51 degrees. We hiked about 2 miles in and decided to split ways in hopes to increase the odds a bit as this would be the only day we could hunt before returning home.
We split ways and after another half mile or so, I found myself where I had intended to listen, found a log to sit on, and sat silent in the black of night for another 20 minutes. It then began raining and I mean pouring for the next 25 minutes. Once the rain subsided, the wind followed and was blowing 20mph constant with gusts in the 30’s! At this point I am freezing cold and questioning my sanity.
I just knew there was no way I would hear a turkey and this was going to be a wasted morning so I began to text Eli to see if he just wanted to meet back at the truck. No sooner than the text delivered, a turkey gobbled on the limb less than 100 yards from my location. I immediately dropped off the log I had been seated on and got to the ground to hide. Shortly after, I began to see turkeys pitch from the limb and land within 75 yards of me. Four hens and a long beard began to shake, dry, and preen themselves not showing much interest in doing anything else. I watched carefully for several minutes waiting on their demeanor to change before I made any noise. My best guess would be 15 or 20 minutes before they began to feed and the gobbler went into a half hearted strut. I yelped softly and got the attention of the hens. They began to feed my direction with the gobbler in tow a good 20-25 yards behind them. As the hens moved closer and closer, the gobbler hung back and began to diagonal away from me. I felt he was in range but at this point my red dot is blurry from moisture, I’m shivering from being cold, and rush of excitement had me so shook up, there was absolutely no way I could pull the trigger accurately. My window of opportunity closed in mere seconds and I had to watch the gobbler walk back to where he first lit, gobble, and pull his hens back to him eventually moving off and out of eyesight.
I sat for 10 minutes trying to gather myself and hoping to give them time to get away enough they would not see me move in my attempt to cut them off. I got to my feet and began to carefully ease through the woods to position myself in front of them once more. I had made it maybe 100 yards from my previous position when I heard a turkey gobble in the direction I had just come from. I stopped to listen more intently and realized that I needed to be back where I was. I hurried back to my log and got situated once more. This pair of gobblers were on fire, gobbling every breath it seemed. I pinpointed them, scanned the area to make sure I had enough cover, and closed the distance another 100 yards. I got on the outside edge of some trees that had appeared to be blown down from recent storm in hopes to stay out of sight until they were well within gun range. I began to call and they were nearly choking on themselves gobbling so often. Much like Illinois the day prior, I wasn’t pouring the call to them. Some light clucks and soft yelping to imitate a feeding hen was more than these fellows could stand. Minutes later, two white light bulbs could be seen through the blown over tree tops and the first gobbler presented a clean 30 yard shot. Pure luck in Kentucky! We will take it any day of the week! Eli had heard the gobblers from a distance and had begun his decent into the bottom before he realized they were most likely gobbling at me. He listened to it all go down a few hundred yards away so by the time I had gotten to my prize, he was owl hooting, fist pumping, and swiftly walking my direction for a fist bump and a few minutes of celebration. What a way to close out the first of undoubtedly many road trips together! State 22.
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Chapter 11: Texas. Not Really.
The next weekend we pointed the truck west. Texas was the destination with the goal of getting my brother in law, Cannon, his first TX gobbler, and Daniel (mentioned a few stories above) his first out of state turkey period before he goes back to Michigan for the next 5 years of his residency.
This specific location is some family land of my very best childhood friend. They left Mississippi in 2008 but Ben and I talk weekly and try to get together every duck season and every other turkey season. This place is special and I have personally killed a pile of birds on this piece. In the days leading up to departure, I had hyped the place up as if it was going to be a cake walk and we’d be piling up turkeys left and right. Well, this was not at all the case!
Honestly, it sucked. Don’t get me wrong, we had a ton of fun regardless of the hunting but the hunting was SLOW! My brother in law was able to find a willing participant but this was really the only turkey that any of us got remotely in the game with. They just weren’t there this year! Nonetheless, we ate like kings, indulged in several too many adult beverages, did some bass fishing, and enjoyed a weekend in the hill county of Texas with great friends.
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bottomlandassassin
Posts: 22
Joined: March 23rd, 2015, 7:42 am
Location: Mississippi

Re: Spring 2023 Recap

Post by bottomlandassassin »

Chapter 12: Quality Time, Quality Hunt

Back home for the last week of the Mississippi season, I wanted to give it my best helping my grandfather kill a home turf gobbler. My work schedule was pretty busy so I wasn’t able to hunt much longer than an hour each morning before heading in to the office.
Finally, by Friday I had caught up and was able to put some time in with him. We returned to a property where we messed with a turkey on Tuesday hoping to sneak in tight and be within gun range of him when he hit the ground. You all know how it goes….he wasn’t there! We had actually walked under him on our way in but thankfully we were early enough he was none the wiser. Once the turkey had hit the ground and begun gobbling, we moved to the top of the ridge over the bottom he was now gobbling in. He was answering the call but as late season turkey do, he wasn’t budging from his location. This back and forth went on for quite a while before I decided I would shut it down and let him make the next move.
To paint the picture, we were about 35 yards down a road that makes a “T” connecting the bottoms to the ridge top. I was sitting 15-20 yards behind my grandfather as we were limited on good trees to hide against. His hearing isn’t great and is completely deaf to drumming. It had rained the evening prior so footsteps were very quiet. The bird had been silent for about 20 minutes so we are merely playing a guessing game at this point. The silence broke to the sound of drumming. I tried to get my grandfather’s attention but he couldn’t hear me. It wasn’t long, I could see the gobbler in the “T” walking left to right which would have been to my grandfather’s 3:00. The gobbler stood for only a few seconds before moving further right and dropping off into the next bottom.
Once he got there, he gobbled again and my grandfather knew he had gotten by us. The bird eventually drifted to our north a couple hundred yards so we gathered our things and headed back to the cart. He asked me if I knew the bird had gotten by us. I hated to tell him but I laughingly said “oh yea, I watched him walk right by your deaf ass at 35 yards”! We had a good laugh and discussed our next move.
I knew the bottom the bird had worked up was pretty large and would eventually lead to a ridgetop with some 12-15 year old planted pines. We made a quick loop around stopping frequently in hopes to strike another before we had made our way to the ridge I wanted to be on.
We parked at 10:00 and the bird gobbled on his own a couple hundred yards to our south still below us in the bottom. As stated before, my grandfather doesn’t get around that well so we walked about 50 yards from the cart and got settled in. I began calling and the bird gobbled well for several minutes. Over the course of the next 30-45 minutes we had several hens come by us anywhere from 10 to 50 yards. I thought for sure that they were leaving the gobbler and he would eventually come to see if he could find us.
At 11:00 the bird was still gobbling in the bottom. I made the decision to move another 40 yards. We did so with extreme caution and somehow managed to get positioned perfectly. I’m no expert with a trumpet but I have had some luck enticing gobblers or getting hens fired up with it this year so I figured, “what the heck”? At 11:15, I yelped on the trumpet and at 11:20 this gobbling joker crested that ridgetop for the last time! My grandfather had killed his first MS gobbler of the season with 3 days left in the season! They say some burn into your memory and you’ll remember it like it happened 5 minutes ago. This is one of those hunts. Special, special morning!
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Chapter 13: The Revisit

Myself and three buddies have been doing a “turkey tour” the first week of May since 2014. It’s always a great time spent together cutting up and having fun but we do hunt hard as well. This year was a little different. One fellow has a newborn and was closing on a new house during that week so he was unable to go and another just couldn’t swing it with work this year. That leaves two of us. While, we were bummed the others weren’t going to be able to join, we were also excited for the opportunity to cover more ground due to it being less tags to fill.

Stop one was to an area we haven’t hunted together in 6 years. Back then, we began seeing a noticeable decline in numbers so we simply just moved states and left the area hoping it would improve. It was a decent stopping point to break the trip up so we decided we’d give it a go with it just being the two of us.
We parked the truck around 5:30pm and walked a creek a decent ways in. There was quite a bit of fresh turkey sign which made us feel good about our choice. We got to a point where we needed to make a decision to get on top or stay low. We both agreed it was worth a peak and a yelp into the high ground then we could always fall back down. As we got near the top, I dropped to my hands and knees using a large tree for cover to be able to peak over the rise. A male turkey was standing less than 50 yards from the tree but I could not determine the age. I signaled to David to drop back down the hill 20 yards and call. The bird gobbled and his whole demeanor changed. He gobbled 3 more times before he went into strut and walked our direction. I knew now that it was a mature bird and had filled tag 1 at 6:06pm.

When my bird gobbled, he enticed a few others to sound off several hundred yards up the creek in the bottom we had just recently made our ascent from. David quickly dropped to the bottom and got the the field edge. I dropped only halfway down and moved in the opposite direction of the gobbling 50-60 yards. I then began calling and they were fired up. Within 20 minutes, three strutters were walking the field edge right down David’s gun barrel and we were tagged out in destination 1! Hot start to Turkey Tour 2023 with two hard gobbling eastern long beards!
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Chapter 14: On ‘em
Destination two lead us to what has been my favorite location to hunt turkeys for quite some time. We’ve been coming here since 2015 and have made friends with several ranchers and landowners in the area. We love coming here as they all treat us like family.
Upon arriving to the bunkhouse we are so graciously allowed to stay in, we were immediately put to work by the landowner moving licking barrels for his cattle. This took a couple of hours but it’s the least we can do considering the reward! We returned to the bunkhouse and changed into our hunting gear.
A short drive up the road we spotted a bird strutting in some shade all by his lonesome. Not much of a story as we made quick work with 2 sequence of yelps and had him down and back in the truck by 3:50pm.
We made our way to a different property that we had originally planned to start hunting that afternoon. We stopped by the owner’s house and sat on the porch catching up for a half hour or so before we parted ways to hunt.
Heading towards the intended parking spot, we located a flock of turkeys with several hens, jakes, and one strutter. Using the terrain, I snuck to within 80 yards, made one call, and the whole flock was headed my direction. I had crawled into a downed cotton wood top which was almost a mistake. The long beard hugged the top tightly and I shot him at 10 steps. I had now filled my first tag at 5:45pm.
As I got back to the truck, David informed me that he had seen some turkeys crossing a meadow in the distance. We drove up the road a bit more and began walking in the direction he assumed they were headed. As we got to the spot we had planned to set up, a bird gobbled to our east. We set up with David on the gun facing that direction. As we began to call, several turkeys gobbled to our west, directly behind David but directly in front of me. It was merely minutes when we spotted a long beard and 4 jakes running our direction. They stopped about 100 yards out and began looking for the hen that was supposed to be nearby. I whispered for David to call softly once the bird dropped into a ditch. Now, he’s searching hard gobbling every step. He had a short thin beard which is typical with Merriam’s gobblers but this one seemed excessively short. He had not yet strutted but I was fully committed that it was a mature gobbler based on the appearance of his wing patch. At 25 yards, he gobbled once more and finally broke into a ½ strut. It was all I needed to see and I was tagged out at 6:43pm on day one! I freaking love this place!
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The next morning, David and I went to a different property in search of filling his final tag here. Gobbling wasn’t as expected and we only heard a handful of birds. While it may sound like I’m complaining, I’m not! This spot just wasn’t as productive as previous years. We made the trek towards a bird we knew had roosted in a favorable location although he was quite a ways off. We got close but the gobbler wouldn’t close the distance and the open terrain didn’t allow us to make a move. He eventually lost interest and turned the other direction.
On our way back to the truck, we heard 2 birds gobbling together so we made a mad dash for them. We beat them to a hilltop by mere seconds. As soon as we settled into cover, the two crested the hill in front of us. Instead of coming down into the draw and working up the bottom, they stayed up high. David whispered to me that they were directly above my head at 20 steps looking down at us. As soon as they put their heads back down, I laid flat on my back, David made a call, and filled his final tag as soon as the rear bird exposed his neck and head. We enjoyed the scenery and soaked in the last few minutes of being in this location over a breakfast bar and bottle of water before we made the hike back to the truck.
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Chapter 15: Tired Legs, Burning Lungs, and Unfilled Tags. Let’s Just Go Home.

Our final destination of Turkey Tour 2023 was brutal to say the least. We traveled here completely blind more or less just throwing a dart at the map. As we arrived to the area, I was reluctant to think there would be many birds around. That proved to be correct over 3 days of hard hunting. We hunted dawn til dusk all three days only hearing two birds gobble during our stint here.
The one turkey we felt good about was ruined by two jack wagons that thought parking 100 yards past my truck and walking directly towards the gobbling turkey on the limb in broad daylight would be a good idea. We had our say of not so kind words with them then left the area.
We left that area and drove south a couple of hours in hopes to find more turkeys and more forgiving terrain. We found both but upon arrival, the specific area was closed to hunting Wednesday-Friday. BUMMER!!!! With four hours of daylight left, we road every county road in the area attempting to locate turkeys and gain permission. The turkeys we found, the permission we did not! Several landowners explained that their numbers had declined so much in the previous two years that they were not allowing anyone to hunt until they see a bounce back. Sad situation to say the least!
After striking out and exhausting all options in that area, with worn out legs and heavy eyes, we pointed the truck east and headed home.
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As much as I would love to squeeze in just one more, I’ve neglected work, family, and other obligations long enough. It’s time to hang it up. I was blessed to see another spectacular season and Lord willing, we’ll do it again next year!
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Chief Razor
Posts: 497
Joined: January 9th, 2022, 9:10 am

Re: Spring 2023 Recap

Post by Chief Razor »

I certainly enjoyed all the stories, well written.
patternfreak
Posts: 176
Joined: June 22nd, 2021, 10:35 am

Re: Spring 2023 Recap

Post by patternfreak »

Great stories as always, many condolences for the loss of your daughter. You paid a wonderful tribute to her. Congratulations on another awesome season
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soiltester
Gobbler Nation
Gobbler Nation
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Joined: March 31st, 2015, 8:04 am
Location: Gaffney SC

Re: Spring 2023 Recap

Post by soiltester »

Now that was quite a Miller Lite recap story ;)
Crack one after another, while sittin' back and enjoyin' the read :thumbup:
ever wonder where the white goes when the snow melts??
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