Spring Rains

Coming up on that time of year where the spring rains lead to frequent flooding.  Dad and I went down to check on the pipes, stoplogs, and flap gates during the last flood to make sure the timber and west field would drain, and east field hold water.  Attempted to drain the fields to mow down the corn before the floods hit but never got close to dry enough.  The majority of the migration has already moved through, but still saw plenty of ducks.

Hope we can avoid any major flooding this year to give our local turkey population a little break.  Just over a week to go for turkey season!  As the forecast stands now, good chance the river will be out of its banks for the opener but we will somehow manage as we do just about every year.

 

Double Down

The first turkey hunt of 2011 turned out to be a successful one after a disappointing season last year...first year in a long time that nobody took a turkey at our farm (might I also add that it was the first year in a long time that I didn't hunt at all...coincidence?).

My dad and I decided to set up together in the double bull blind in hopes of connecting on a couple of longbeards.  We have had multiple birds come in on this same set in years past so we figured we had a decent shot at a double.  I was toting my bow in hopes of arrowing a turkey with the stick and string, and the plan was for me to get an arrow off just before he squeezed the trigger on a second bird.  Well, as always seems to be the case, our feathered friends had a different plan.  As the woods started to wake up, we heard the first unmistakable sound of a gobbler ringing off in the distance.  Minutes later, we found ourselves encompassed by resounding gobbles in all directions.  Only problem was, none of them were where we expected them to be.

We let them do their thing for awhile before I let off a series of soft tree yelps to let them know we were there.  Several different birds responded...two were quite a ways behind us and another other two were much closer on the field edge but at the opposite end, although quite a bit further away than we'd like.  We let the woods continue to wake up and enjoyed the sounds of gobbles for what seemed like an hour but probably only lasted 15-20 minutes.  The woods gradually became quieter as we assumed most of the birds flew down from their roost and were likely with hens.  We still had that one closest tom sounding off to our calls for awhile longer but he eventually became silent as well.  

I decided to go runnin' n gunnin' around 9 to see if I could get a lonesome tom to sound off with no luck.  When I walked back out towards the field, my dad peeked out the back of the blind and saw that a couple birds had snuck up on him and were walking along the field edge towards one of the decoys.  They must have seen/heard me because they headed back into the cover of the woods before he could get a good look at them, but he thought they may have been jakes.  We devised a plan to try and cut them off and made a quick sneak up ahead.  Just before we got to a point in the field, my dad let out a series of yelps and a gobble sounded off in the other direction, probably not more than 100 yds away.  I peaked around the point and sure enough we had cut those other turkeys off as well. 

Things got interesting from here...those two turkeys turned out to be three, and the one gobbling turned out to have a buddy with him too.  So now we have two toms sounding off to our right at every sound we make and getting closer each time, and three "jakes" to our left that are staying quiet.  We didn't have the best cover to hide in but tucked ourselves back into the timber while trying to stay quiet because we knew it was only a matter of time before we were being bombarded from both sides.  I'm thinking that the two that we hadn't seen are going to come in first so I set up in their direction.  Before we knew it, the three to our left came trotting in...no gobbling, no strutting, just walked right at us.  It wasn't until then that we realized these were mature birds and not the jakes we thought they were.  My dad, off to my left, let them get as far as he could hoping to get us both an easy shot.  The closest bird was only 10 ft from the end of his barrel and they were starting to act a little spooky. 

He pulled the trigger on the back bird thinking I had a clear shot at the lead one.  I did, but I also probably would have blown his ear drums out if I took the shot so I waited.  He rolled his bird and the other two fled the scene, with one heading right into my shooting window.  I dropped it thinking we had our double but it popped right up and took off running across the field.  I was standing at this point, and for a brief instant, stood there relaxed and said to myself, "welp, here we go", knowing what was about to ensue.  I took off in a dead sprint after the wounded bird trying to catch up to it before it made it into the timber.  It may come as a surprise, but a turkey can run much faster than I can apparently!  I took a hail mary shot just before it got into the timber and rolled it again but it just kept on going.  I entered shortly behind him and stopped as I tried to figure out which way he went and taking note that I only have one shot left so I better make it count.  The silence must have been too much for him to handle, because he popped up from the tall grass he had hid in just feet away from me and took off running and putting.  I'm not sure what took me so long, maybe he startled me that much, or maybe he was just that fast, but he was already long gone by the time I got my gun shouldered.  And the chase continued...

The next couple of minutes consisted of an all out sprint through the thick timber, over fallen trees, under fallen trees, and through thorny vines.  The turkey was much more agile than I throughout the chase, but I somehow managed to keep up.  He finally made it to some thick brush on the edge of the field where he thought he was safe.  I stopped 10 yds to his side, took a few seconds to catch my breath, and slowly raised my gun to seal the deal.  Definitely not the "easy double" we had thought it was going to be just minutes prior, but eventful nonetheless.  

I dragged the little rascal out into the field, collapsed on the ground, and lay there by the side of my trophy as my dad and his new bionic knee gimped his way down the field where fist bumps and laughs were exchanged.

Farm Update

I was beginning to have farm withdrawals after not being down there for more than a month.  I finally made it down this past weekend to get a little work and play done.  Right before turning in to the drive to our place, I saw a big ol’ tom in full strut about 60 yds off the road near the edge of a field we often see them.  I stopped and watched as my spring turkey fever instantly went through the roof.  I normally make an effort to not do any calling when I’m not actually hunting, but I couldn’t resist the urge and gave out a series of yelps with my mouth to see if I could get him to gobble.  Each time I yelped, he would turn his body side to side almost as if he was “strutting harder” if that even makes sense.  No gobbles though…

My binocs were in the back of the truck and I was really wishing I would have grabbed the DSLR camera and telephoto lens at this point.  I watched him strut for a good couple of minutes and then he began to break out of strut a little.  Now, I never have seen a pair of turkeys breed in the field before, but I have seen toms attempt to breed the decoys I'm hunting over…and that was exactly what this guy was doing.  I knew what he was doing but couldn’t figure out why for the life of me.  As I continued to watch, it all made sense…shortly after a hen stood up and walked off into the woods with the tom following.  Apparently the hen was sitting down that whole time he was strutting and I just couldn’t see her through the tilled corn stubble.  Quite an exciting start to the day!

Next on my list of things to do was to refresh a couple of mineral licks.  In the past I have always used the Whitetail Institute’s 30-06 mix and/or Trophy Rock’s and have had great success with both.  The cost of replenishing them began to add up though so I decided to switch to a homemade recipe that is available on many places on the internet, which many have probably seen before.  You can get all of the supplies at your local ag and feed store.  The recipe is as follows:

Di-Calcium Phosphate (1 part)

Trace Mineral Salt (2 parts)

Stock Salt (1 part)

Be sure to not mix the ingredients until you are ready to pour it into the lick.  I use a couple of 5 gallon buckets to mix and pour the mix, then dump some water over the mix after adding it to the lick site if it’s dry.  Our farm and the word dry don’t really go together so there’s normally already water in the lick, in which case I just mix it in real good with my boots.

I’ve had a Reconyx and Scoutguard camera over my main lick for the past month with the intent of doing a side-by-side comparison between the two cameras.  Well, the Reconyx took 1,473 pictures and the Scoutguard only took 50.  Obviously the Reconyx won this battle but something obviously wasn’t working right on the Scoutguard.  I pulled it and took it home for some troubleshooting.  I was using an off-brand memory card and hoping that was the cause of the problems, otherwise I may have to send it in...again.

The lick has been getting a lot of action…mainly from some big doe family groups, but also from several bucks that are already starting to sprout some velvet.  The main lick is in a heavy doe family area and the does normally kick the bucks out of the area here in a month or two when they are getting ready to give birth.  It may sound crazy, but I firmly believe it to be the truth.  I get many pictures of does kicking bucks away from the lick that time of year every year.  And then the number of buck pictures quickly drop off to nearly nothing through the summer months while they are raising the fawns.

After replenishing the licks, Riley and I aimlessly walked through the woods hoping to stumble on a shed or some mushrooms with no luck.  I carried a crow call with me and gave out some calls throughout the walk to see if I could get a lonely tom to shock gobble.  The winds were blowing 20+ mph though so I didn’t expect much out of it but was worth of try.  This technique works great and has helped me to bag some late morning gobblers in past seasons.

We did stumble on a climbing stand that was left 15+ ft in a tree on our walk through the woods.  Now, for those of you that know how climbing stands work, I think you can guess what must have happened here.  It’s obvious the stand slipped/broke and the guy fell down to the ground.  There’s no other way to get down once up there unless they used climbing sticks and just left the stand.  But judging how the bottom piece is dangling there, my bet is someone fell.  This was just off our property line on land I also have permission to hunt.  Nobody else has permission to hunt this area that I know of, but we do have some locals that own an extremely small tract nearby that roam the entire area like they own it all.  My guess is it was one of them, and I hate to admit it, but a little grin came across my face when I saw this.  We’ve run these guys off our land many times and have had trail cameras and stands stolen.  I do hope no one was seriously hurt, but I'm sure they at least had to change their pants after a fall like that.  It looks like the stand has been there awhile but I was in this area before last season and never noticed it…perhaps I just didn’t see it?  I'm going to mention it to the farmer to see if anyone else has permission to hunt his land for the past several years.  

Before we headed out we made a quick walk through the tract of timber we had been doing the TSI.  I was happy to see the spring storms and heavy winds brought down a lot of the trees that were hung up.  I snapped a few pictures on my cell phone of some of the damage we made before heading home.

Winter Wonderland

Put in another long day of TSI this past weekend.  Made a lot of progress again and the project is coming along nicely. We have a few more weekends where we'll be working hard to drop as many trees as possible, and then will move on to cleaning up the mess we've left in the area we'll be doing the duck hunting.  For the rest of the area, we'll leave the clutter on the ground as it provides great habitat and shelter for deer, turkey, and other small critters.  

The area we have been working in was thick with deer tracks and beds, and there were many areas we could see where the turkeys were scratching in the snow for any acorns that are still around.

I managed to sneak away for the chainsaw for an hour to do some scouting and check a trail camera while my dad and Jason continued to work, and took several pictures along the way.

A few pictures of some of the progress we've made....

My scouting mission....

Set this up on a trail crossing through some heavy cover

Found several rubs from this past season

Kicked up several does bedded here

Lots of traffic along the field edge

Remains of a young deer

Hitting the new mineral lick I started last fall

Plenty of food left for the critters still

Lots of traffic, bedding, and browse in our TSI area

Always good to see some sign within bow range of your stand

Had a reconyx set up over a standing bean field.  I can't say enough good about these cameras.  My only complaint is that it took TOO MANY pictures this time out.  The turkeys were hitting this portion of the field hard for several days after the heavy snow, and I didn't have the camera delay set up with that in mind.  Ended up getting 7,230 pictures over the course of a couple weeks...the card filled up just a couple days before I checked it.  Battery life still read 72% after taking that many pictures.  Got some great turkey shots and a couple nice bucks hanging around.  I have a feeling I'll find a shed or two in this field...can't wait!

Looks like there'll be plenty of turkeys around come spring season!  Here's a timelapse video of all the pictures combined, followed by a few select still shots.  I had the camera set to take a picture every 5 minutes for the first and last 2 hours of daylight...notice the turkeys roosting in the trees in the background.