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May 17, 2009 Turkey Decoys 101-12byI’d been cruising along, filling spring turkey tags around the country, three of them on opening days in Texas, Vermont and Maine; my Florida bird dropped on day two. Enter New Hampshire. Time to pay some dues. On that state’s spring turkey opener, a particular vocal gobbler found three ways to beat me, coming inside range to my calls from behind me, in front of me (hidden in thick cover), and again behind me (unseen but heard), with his hen (where'd she come from?) swinging in to just several yards, even hopping onto a tree branch to check my position out. Cool stuff, for starters. I hadn’t killed a wild turkey over a decoy all season; not in March, nor April nor early May. After that first day in NH, I started thinking it might help. The next time out, in a different location, I struck a gobbler in mid morning, worked that bird, and heard him hang up at around 80 yards in a pasture corner. Right where he could have easily seen the three hen decoys I had in front of me. That gobbler wanted the foam fakes to walk to him I guess, and it drifted off, gobbling. NH shooting hours close at noon. I left. That afternoon, a buddy phoned, checking in the way we turkey hunters do. The same thing had happened to him in Maine that morning. Gobbler watched his decoys at 80 yards or so, then walked off. Fast forward to my most recent Friday May 15 hunt for the tough NH gobbler. After hunting a new spot and striking out to silence, I returned to the scene of the crime. I eased slowly to that pasture corner where he’d last stood. It was 8:30 a.m. or so. Straight up, the gobbler cut off my first call, 50 yards away in the woods. This time I decided to go without the hang-up dekes. For over an hour, he hammered, moving along a dirt path roughly 50 yards away in a finger of woods between two farms, never coming in, but obviously looking my way by the sounds of it. I heard him, never saw him, and added heavy doses of silence to my clucking and yelping. When he hammered back about 60 yards away in front of me, I clucked and yelped on both a mouth and friction call. To that, I added a gobble, pumping the call hard and fast. I mouth yelped one more time, and I cut that off with another gobble. I pointed my gun in that direction, waited. Silence. Five minutes later if that, I heard a stick snap. Heard crunching in the leaves off my left shoulder, behind me. That gobbler had slipped in. Pinned down. I was sure he’d pass into my peripheral vision, cruise by into range, and drop in the pasture corner after my gun shot. A single cluck came from that position. “Where are you?” the turkey asked. No dekes in view, I didn’t respond. I next heard that bird gobble moving far away through property I couldn’t hunt. Game over. What would you Strut Zoners have done to kill that turkey? Do you think decoys would have helped pull that gobbler the final yards? Do you guys use dekes? Always? Never? Sometimes? What now? Do I find a fresh bird or keep after this tough NH gobbler? Season ends May 31. It's getting personal. [ Read Full Post ]May 13, 2009 Think Pink-25byThough I'm sure none of you guys would be caught dead with it, Remington now has a shotgun female shooters might love to have. The new 870 Express Compact with Mossy Oak pink camouflage is sure to be the talk of the hunting camp or shooting range when a young lady shows up to shoot with this new gun. Got a daughter just starting out as a hunter? The 870 Express Compact is designed with the young shooter in mind and will grow with them as they grow. Each gun comes with a length of pull kit that enables the owner to increase the length of pull from 13 inches to 14 inches as needed. There are three spacers, one half-inch and two quarter-inch, in the kit with corresponding screws. As the shooter grows, these spacers can be added to keep the gun fit perfect. The 870 Compact also comes with a SuperCell recoil pad that helps reduce the felt recoil. Each barrel on the gun is 21-inches long and comes with the VR-BS Rem-Choke system. The gun weighs six pounds and has an overall length of 40 ½ to 41 ½ inches. Suggested retail price is $439. It's a bit late for Mother's Day, but maybe you Strut Zoners need a birthday gift to keep both of you happy? Maybe your teenaged daughter needs a gun of her own? Gerry, you reckon your daughter and hunting buddy Amy would go for this? [ Read Full Post ]May 8, 2009 The Day I Was Shot At-32byTook a few days off last week to hunt some turkeys up at my camp. To say that the week was successful is an understatement. Five guys took eight birds and everyone had multiple opportunities to fill their two tags. Things kind of came to a screeching halt on Thursday morning when we were shot at. Here's the tale... The patches of New England woods we hunt are relatively rural, however, there are occasions when we hear birds hammering on private ground and attempt to call them onto property we can hunt. Thursday was such a day. While checking our spots along a stretch of public road, we got a couple of birds to gobble. They were clearly on a piece of property we did not have permission to hunt and tried to 'triangulate' their position in order to strategize a setup location on land that we could indeed hunt. That's when we heard a shotgun blast and the rain of birdshot trickling through the leaves all around us. Wow! A flood of reactions coursed through each of us. To be completely honest, gut-instinct told me to launch retaliatory fire. I resisted the temptation. I also thought about marching (driving) up to the landowner for a face-to-face confrontation about his actions. Next, I thought about simply calling the state police to let them deal with it. In the end, I did call the state police in order to alert them to my situation. Did I want to press hunter harassment charges? I'm thinking that I definitely should have, but did not. What are your thoughts, guys? Would love to get some imput.—Gerry Bethge [ Read Full Post ]May 8, 2009 Take A Jake?-18byRight now, some of you have tagged out. Your season might even be over. You’re basking in the glory of the spring hunt. The post-game win stuff. Grilling turkey and telling stories. All that. Meanwhile, maybe a bud or two, is still carrying a tag where seasons are still open. They’ve got a rabid howler monkey on their backs. They just can’t seem to close the deal on a longbeard this season. Do you think they should shoot the next jake in range? Would you in that situation? Biologists around the country are likely to tell you there’s no reason not to take a shortbeard. They’re legal in most states, good eating, and they often even gobble well, especially late in the season as pecking order continues to shift. So what’s the shame in dumping a jake? Well, for one, we’re all primed to hunt and tag two-year-old longbeards or older. We’re programmed. The articles we read, the camp conversations, outdoor TV, and so on, all suggest you’re lame if you put the smackdown on a shortbeard. Jakes are for young hunters and newbies. Others say: “You can’t eat the beard.” These are the guys who are happy with a little ol’ spikehorn in deer camp. They’re just content to be in camp, and have some venison for the freezer. And sometimes they even kill a big buck. Or longbeard. Where do you stand on this Strut Zoners? It’s late in the spring turkey season. Maybe the LAST day. Do you pull the trigger on a jake in range, or do you let that bird walk into adulthood, and eat that tag? [ Read Full Post ]May 5, 2009 More New England Gobblers-15byRoughly 20,000 Maine turkey hunters hit the woods and fields on the Monday, May 4 opener. That’s double from last year. Why? The birth year split-season is no longer at play. No lottery either. Everybody can hunt through June 6, single tag providing. Estimated state population: 50,000 birds. Translation: hunter pressure. Here in southern Maine the competition for access and habitat is pretty challenging. Less so as you move north. I had that in mind while talking to a hunting bud the day before the opener. “Well aren’t you gonna go out a little later in the morning the way you usually do?” he asked. I was, rising early, making coffee for myself and better half, and breakfast for my little girl. An opening-day plan had been hatched. My wife chimed in, agreeing that it would help her work schedule out if I dropped our daughter off at school. An hour later, I parked the truck in the farmer’s driveway as he and his wife pulled out. It was a little past eight a.m., three hours after legal shooting opened here in the land that first sees the U.S. sunrise. Had anyone been in there that morning? Not that they could tell. That was good news, for a moment at least. I thanked them, moved off. As I eased up the path, pussyfooting, looking way ahead for black blobs, I heard—no way—somebody owling in the near woods. Near the grassy field where I’d found a big ol’ gobbler weeks before. Dang. Like you guys, I’d been there before. A little brush-back pitch wasn’t going to slow this determined opening-day hitter down. Since I’d arrived late, I plunked two dekes down on a high grassy bench, set up. Cold called. Waited. Steps in the woods behind me said a silent bird, hen or gobbler I never knew, had me in its radar. Or was it the owler? I froze. The drama passed. An hour or so after, a power walker appeared in my vision, a woman making the circuitous route in the lower farm fields. She closed the distance, looked at the hen fakes as if real turkeys wouldn’t spook either, and moved on, even after I whistled to indicate my position. I reasoned that the lower pasture she’d moved through now certainly had no birds in it. That made my next decision easier: I’d slink along the far woods, ease in along the edge cover, cold call. I liked the looks of this. Turkey tracks helped matters. Unfortunately I saw a fresh boot track too. I set up, no decoys. A slate in my hands, a diaphragm in the roof of my mouth, I made like some mid-morning turkeys wanting company. What was that? A gobble on top of the far hill? Another confirmed it. Sweet. I laid on some silence, and when it seemed right, called again. A turkey or turkeys responded. What I witnessed next had me thinking: You have got to be kidding. Black turkey body, patriotic head, moving in, then another, and four more, all gobblers, all hustling toward me sounding like six whitetails running through the leaves, not wild turkeys. Soon they were all in range. That’s when yet another gobbler to my left ripped a hole in my heart, gobbling hard. The others had arrived first, and it was game time. I sized each one up at seven, eight steps max. A couple of them did the wing-flick thing, turned. One putted. Then another. The biggest of them, a chest like a Hooters employee taking your order, stood wadded up with two others. Bad shot. I’d have to settle for the sub-dominant gobbler to the left. He wheeled a little, and I dumped him. There were 19,999 hunters in the woods the next day, minus the other guys who tagged too. [ Read Full Post ]May 3, 2009 Vermont Turkey Opener-10byMay 1st—the Vermont spring turkey opener. The border, just two road hours from my southern Maine log home. Northern New England fog on the way. Gusty rain at times. The hint of road construction awaiting my return. Finally though, after a tall cup of coffee and radio rock music buoying me there, I'd made the run. I eased into the woods, took a deep breath of the moist spring air. Man, it was good to be out again. Hunting alone in road-trip mode, I set up on a field first, just to get a feel for things. The misty showers would likely flush turkeys out of the woods. I listened, watched, cold-called, waited. It only took an hour or so for me to get antsy and annoyed by my three hen fakes (“mobility limiters”) in front of me. While I can lounge forever waiting on geese to land in my December decoy spread, I’m often a run-and-gunner with wild turkeys. I like to initiate a conversation. To me, raising a spring gobbler and calling it into your lap is the deal. Yeah, I’ll sit on some field somewhere soon, no doubt, but not this opening day Vermont morning, at least not for long. Decoys surely work for some of my buddies. And they do allow you to hunt while catching a setup power nap. And they're great with a blind around you, and archery tackle in your hands. But I was ready to move. I took a little walk, easing along the inside of the woods, skirting a different opening, turkey sign all around. And this: one huge, fresh turkey track in the mud. I called again. The gobbler that answered me seemed about a quarter-mile off through the piney woods, just off that green field. I liked the feel of it. So I settled in (no decoys this time), watching the field with my right eye, and the woods I sat in with my left. I’d call, wait, call some more. Patience sometimes kills turkeys in this situation. Working a mouth diaphragm and slate at the same time, the gobbler answered, now closer; maybe half the distance. Soon, two black bodies, red, white and blue heads at a distance through the woods, looking for me. My shotgun was on my knee, pointed in that direction. So I eased it up when they went behind pines on the edge of the wooded area. I waited. Then, brief panic setting in, and I didn’t see them anymore. Scared off? Maybe a minute passed; likely less time though it felt like more. Movement out in front. A turkey, right there, behind a little edge cover, 15 steps and closing. They looked for the source of the calling. Jake, gobbler, hen. I looked for beard length on the two male birds. One would definitely do, and my attention focused on it; the other male turkey, the lead shortbeard, would get a pass (it’s a two-bird-a-spring-season state). The lead turkey, the jake, stepped through the shooting lane, and fast. The gobbler I wanted followed. I’d have to cutt hard, three sharp notes, to get the second turkey to stop. Cluck-yawp-yawp. It worked. Up periscope, looking right at me. K-pow. Bird down. Alarm putting followed, as I walked the 10 steps toward my opening day Vermont gobbler. I was about halfway home when it hit me. War whoop. Fist pump. Goofy grin. The works. How sweet it is. [ Read Full Post ] |
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