You win some, you lose some

Dani

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This weekend opened our turkey season. It was anticipated to be a wet, cold opener. I contemplated working and then taking off Monday like I did last year with the same situation, but sadly work had other plans for me. So, Saturday it was.

I set the alarm, woke up a bajillion times through the night for fear of missing my alarm and listened to the rain continue to pour down. I'm sure I've said it before. I HATE hunting turkeys in the rain. I get cold quickly and they are ugly. But you can't kill one while you are snuggled deep in your nice, warm, cozy bed with a setter curled up with you. So, my alarm went off, I checked the radar and the expected rain chances and drug myself out of the house.

The rain should stop, says the weather liars, shortly after sunrise. Then it should be cloudy the rest of the day as the temperatures continue to drop. Lovely. Wet. Cold. Windy. Gonna be fuuuuuuun.

The liars were right! The rain stopped shortly after sunrise. The turkeys said not one single yelp, cluck or purr much less a gobble. I didn't expect them to. My turkeys seem to enjoy the cold and wet as much as I do so they must have been grumbling somewhere back in the swamp. We have been really dry this winter and into the spring so I really only need hip boots to cross the ditches to get into the swamp. Hopefully my new hip boots will be in soon but I was actually happy to be wearing my chest waders. At least I was warm and mostly dry!

Then the weather liars proved that once again, they are liars. The rain started back up. And then thunder. What the heck?!?!?!?! There wasn't supposed to be thunder. And the temps kept going down. So, after sitting a while in a spot that I have frequently seen birds and getting wetter and listening to the thunder get closer and closer, I decided that I was indeed hearing my truck calling me back to it.

I was happy to get into the truck and turn that heater on. It was still kind of early in the morning and I thought I'd drive around to check the conditions of the roads and water levels across some of those roads. The roads were overall better than last year but I still chose to turn around, not get stuck in the mud hole that frequently sucks big trucks into it. As I was passing an intersection, I saw a hen running down the road. I watched her for a bit and then decided "hmmmmmmmmmm it's not raining anymore and where there are hens, there will be gobblers somewhere close by". I parked the truck and then went for a walk looking for the best spot to sit and watch the road as well as the fairly fresh burn.

I found the perfect spot. Good canopy so when it started raining again, I was not getting soaking wet. The rain was light later in the morning but it kept falling from the skies despite what the weather liars claimed. I sat for about an hour, got cold and when there was a lightning strike somewhere close by in my woods I was DONE! The turkeys can have the morning! I am going home, crawling into a hot bath and then taking a nap!

That is what I did.

The evening turned out to be dryish though. Not as much rain. Still quite cool. Belle needed running so off to the quail lease we went. I needed to feed the quail and she needed a good fun time in the woods.

Whaddya know? The little monster pointed an entire flock of turkeys for me!!!!!

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And there was a nice gobbler in there. She handled them like a well trained bird dog should so I was happy about that as I muttered to the turkey gods about teasing me.

Sunday was going to be a much better day, weather-wise. I had high hopes for some cooperating turkeys.

I got out to the woods, stood around waiting when the gobbling started. It was a long ways off so I stayed by the truck to see if any of my swamp turkeys would sound off. They were a bit slow to wake up, but wake up they did. I didn't know what direction to go in. I heard at least ten different gobblers. They were a ways off. Probably at least in the 500 yard range at the closest but I could still hear them gobbling up a storm. There were some off in the pines too but they weren't any closer. Where to go? What to do?

I decided that I would walk the road until I could find a decent trail into the swamp. I had parked poorly so the swamp was incredibly thick there. I couldn't just cross the ditch and head off in the direction of any of the gobblers. I would be thrashing and crashing and tromping so much that turkeys I killed in the past would hear me. I had to walk a bit farther than I expected but eventually I was able to cross the ditch and see if I could get close to a gobbler.

I couldn't. I tried. But once they were on the ground, lordy could those suckers cover some ground. Then they fairly quickly shut up. They were not interested in talking to me and they didn't shock to hawks or woodpeckers. So, I decided to sit in a few places and see what there was to see. Hear what there was to hear.

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I did some exploring and learning more of my swamp. This is going to be a fun year in the swamp if we don't get a lot more rain. I love to hunt places like this. Even when it is hot out, it is considerably cooler than other turkey areas. And there is almost always so much going on. I watched a barred owl do some crawfishing. Lots of woodpeckers doing their things. Red shouldered hawks were screaming and bouncing through the treetops. Deer are often just around the bend of a palmetto clump. Even when the turkeys do not cooperate, I am seldom bored sitting out there.

The wind picked up pretty early in the morning. It was pretty strong and the downside of hunting my swamps is that when those trees are blowing, I can't hear anything. A turkey would have to be standing right behind me for me to hear him gobble. So, I called it a day.

Me: 0
Belle: 1
Turkeys: 2

I headed home and as I was driving in the driveway, my vet, David, calls me asking if I wanted some pheasant, chukar and quail. I said SURE! He and a few fellas from the quail lease were taking advantage of the gorgeous cool temperatures and doing some dog training. I was like, let me grab Belle and I will be right on out.

They cleaned all the birds for me. YAY for me!!!

I let Belle do some running while I chatted with David and the lease manager. Belle had a couple of good finds. Her steadiness has been improving a lot since I have been able to work with folk who know what they are doing and with other dogs. So, the lease manager grabbed some of his younger dogs and did backing drills while Belle held her birds. It was a nice way to spend the early afternoon.

Eventually, David said he had to go and I lingered a few minutes longer. As I was leaving, he called me, "I JUST HIT A &$%^$%(*$%^#&*!@^& TURKEY WITH MY TRUCK!!!!! THE &^$%*&#&!!! THING FLEW RIGHT INTO MY WINDSHIELD!" He had a few more things to say and then calmed down and asked. "Do you want it?"

YUP! I'll be right there.

I go and meet him and DAMN. His windshield was shattered. 2/3 of it nothing but shards. Glass was all over the front passenger seat. He got lucky because the drivers side was still able to be seen through so he could get home. Luckily no one was injured but the turkey (though David felt really awful about hitting him). And it was a nice two year old gobbler. It was his first turkey. I popped the beard off for him and told him I would get him the spurs. I need to get a Toyota emblem and mount it on a plaque or something and mount the spurs and a place for his beard.

I cleaned that bird and it was about as perfect as you could hope, meat wise. The truck broke his back. David was very happy to hear that the meat was not ruined by the impact of the Toyota.

He was a gorgeous bird, so I made sure he had a nice funeral.

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It was a very interesting opening weekend...plenty of birds around....I didn't have to fire a shot but I came away from the weekend with quail, chukar, pheasant and turkey. Tough to complain about that!

Me: 0
Belle: 1
Turkeys: 2
Toyota: 1
 
I guess you folks don't mess around when it comes to the size of your turkey weapons. Congrats (sorta) on your roadkill. [w00t]
 
Love it, just love it.

Given the decline I've seen in my area, it is hard to think that I'll be real excited to push and push for turkeys anymore, kinda sad, but I have plenty on my plate. I haven't been seeing birds this spring either, so that suggests that this season will be tough again. Glad you are having a great time and good luck!
 
Dani,
Another great photo story! Thanks for writing it up. I'm surprised you didn't get a shock gobble from the lightning/thunder. I've had that happen numerous times. My 16 yr old daughter driving to work one day called crying. She said "I just hit a bird" I said "why are you crying?" She said, "the turkey broke my windshield!" Well, I was thinking along the line of songbird....When we got to her and the car, their was turkey guts and feathers spread all over her broken windshield and a large dent in her Saturn hood. I felt bad giving her grief to be so distraught about "hitting a bird."
Living in northern Michigan, we are at risk when driving of hitting deer, bear, grouse and turkeys, not to mention the smaller 4 legged creatures. I always stressed to my daughters, NEVER swerve to avoid an animal. The trees kill more drivers/passengers than animals running off the road to avoid a hit!

I know your passion to hunt turkeys Dani, and we look forward to more stories and pics of your season. No sleeping in this weekend!
And Joe, funny you mentioned The Bug song. I was playing some Mary Chapin Carpenter yesterday while driving and heard it. For some of us older folk, you might have heard Dire Straits perform it.

Todd, quite a bit being written about turkey numbers dropping. That has been the case around my area as well. A great bird to introduce young hunters to the excitement of hunting.
Steve
 
Nice story. FWIW, we've been hearing toms start to gobble around our house, even with 18" of hard-pack snow still in the woods. You'd think those lazy southern birds could stand up to a little warm rain. [;)]


Many years ago, during a long recovery from a car accident, I needed a surgery to repair my right ankle. My appointment was for 7 am on March morning, with orders to report to the hospital 2 hours early to be prepped and sedated and anaesthetized, and the day of we woke up at 2 am in the middle of Nor'easter. Called the hospital who said that as far as they knew the surgery was still on, so off we drove, with the usual 45 minutes to the hospital turned into an hour and a half in a howling blizzard. As we came out of a toll booth, a big tom that was struggling to fly across the highway smashed into the windshield out of the snow. We never even saw it. Fortunately we were only going 15 mph and no damage was done to the car. Turkey was dead, but we left it in the road as we were already running late.

At the hospital my surgeon was there and ready to go, but enough nurses and other staff were not that the OR was shut down, so we drove back home in the storm, VERY slowly!
 
Thanks y'all!

Todd, I didn't open up his crop to see what he'd been eating. Probably should have.

Tod, sucks that turkeys are doing so bad up there. I guess they aren't doing great down here either since GA and AL lowered their limits last year (or the year before but I think last year). I really haven't noticed a difference in population where I hunt but that could just be the location and lack of people in the general area. How's the winter in WY this year, or have you heard/seen where your place is? I've read the Dakotas are having a pretty tough winter snow wise.

Jeff, my birds are pampered compared to y'alls. They can have daily mud baths for their feet so they stay soft if they want, rarely a lack of food anywhere, plenty of places to roost, lotsa ladies to serenade, comparatively warm temperatures, swamps to stay cool in when it is hot out.....with spoiled birds like that, can you blame them for not liking cold rainy days?
 
Dani said:
How's the winter in WY this year, or have you heard/seen where your place is? I've read the Dakotas are having a pretty tough winter snow wise.

Super tough winter in WY, lot of snow and cold. We tracked the daily temps last year compared to here and this year out there it is WAY colder. We have a guy renting the basement to have someone in the house and he grew up in the area and said it was the worst winter he has ever seen - very tough on the animals - our area winters a lot of antelope, deer and elk. It is so far from spring there it isn't funny - today's high is 29, but over the weekend the highs are in the teens and negative single digits forecasted. If the winters were nice, we couldn't afford the area, given how amazing it is.
 
Dani~


What a fine piece of writing - and your photos are always a treat!


Thanks for the memorable entertainment.


(Our season here in New York is the month of May.)



All the best,


SJS
 
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