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A Little Redemption For My Turkey Season

May 11, 2010.

Earlier this spring, HTW Pro-staffer Paul Vanderspek and I spent 3 days chasing turkeys on a limited-draw hunt in eastern Colorado. Spek took a nice gobbler on the last morning he was able to hunt -- I got blanked. (Read More....)

The weekend after that, another friend took 2 turkeys in Nebraska on a 2-day hunt, both with a bow.

Feeling more than a little left out on the action, I decided to sneak back to Colorado's South Republican Wildlife Area this past weekend for a quick hunt.

Spek and I had patterned the birds pretty well during our earlier hunt, so I knew exactly where I wanted to be when I arrived on friday afternoon.

By about 5pm I was set up on the edge of a roosting area, looking out over a food plot of grass hay where I expected the birds to stage before roosting. My "set-up" didn't include a fancy blind, or even a tree to lean against -- as often happens when I hunt turkeys on the high plains, I was simply nestled prone in some long grass and weeds, resting my shotgun on my pack in front of me to minimize movement when and if turkeys approached.

Sure enough, the spot I had picked was still seeing lots of activity. I had birds within 200 yards almost continuously.

There was a flock of hens that I would occasionally see just over a little rise, and a big strutting tom standing guard over them.

A number of satellite toms -- nice birds with maybe 8-inch beards -- kept running by, nervous whenever the big dominant tom looked their way.

All the birds stayed well out of range, though, and I felt like I had some kind of big turkey-proof bubble surrounding me.

The flock eventually moved in to the hay field in front of me, about 150 yards out. The flock was bigger than I had realized, maybe 20 hens and 2 mature toms.

It was open country, and I was painfully aware that there was a good chance that they could easily swing wide around me as the fed towards their roost.

But that was not the case.

After loafing well out of range for a while, they suddenly pulled up stakes and moved towards me -- straight towards me. They went from 100 yards out to 10 yards out in about a 5 second sprint.

I was hugging the ground to keep from getting busted by the now-too-close turkeys, and was having a tough time seeing through the grass to find one of the toms in the densely-packed flock. The setting sun that was just behind the turkeys didn't help.

They could see me lying in the grass, and were starting to get nervous.

Two birds stuck up their heads to check me out. They both looked bigger than the surrounding hens, but I couldn't see beards with so much grass in my face and sun in my eyes.

One of the two birds looking at me turned his head just a little, and the sun lit up the redness of his head.

A split second later a whole bunch of #5s were on the way, and the flock broke up FAST.

I jumped up. The turkey I had shot at was nowhere to be seen, but there was a cloud of small neck feathers hanging in the air.

I quickly found him down in his tracks in the deep grass, maybe 6 yards from where I had taken the shot.

Just a jake -- much smaller than the 9-incher that Spek had taken in this same field two weeks earlier -- but my first turkey in several years.

And taken the way that I enjoy most -- patterning and sneaking rather than decoying and calling -- my apologies to turkey hunting purists.

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