Opening weekend Colorado

[spaightlabs]

Saturday opener was just too cold to sit in the woods, so with Sunday forecasted to be in the 60s with some sun I thought the chances of a fired up bird were better then.

It was still only 20 degrees when I set up with intermittent bits of fog rolling through the river bottom.  With lots of gobbling  both east and west of me as the sun started to lighten the sky I thought I was in for a quick hunt.  Minutes after the birds hit the ground and while they were still gobbling I had a couple of birds getting closer from the west.  My thoughts of a quick hunt were short-lived as it became apparent they were off the property and heading north to the fields. 

After 4 hours of nothing but deer and quail I had to take a nature break.  As I was admiring the river and the geese relaxing on a sandbar a half mile a way a turkey flew out to the sandbar.  Binos revealed he was a shooter.  I called at him a couple of times and he took to wing again and flew to the other side of the river.  Gone.

20 minutes later I heard a couple of hens in one of the fields on the farm I was on.  I started talking to them a bit and a hen answered from the other side of the South Platte. For several minutes she was chatting with the ladies on my side, and every time she talked she gave a kee kee before her series of yelps.  I hadn't heard that in the wild before and I thought it was a 2-note chickadee call and that she was cutting the chickadee off with her yelps. 

I started cutting her off each time I heard her start her kee kee and eventually a tom gobbled from her side.  After 5 minutes of me cutting her off she came to the river bank and took off, flying my direction.  Once she took off, the tom followed about 2 seconds later.  The pair landed under 10 yards from me and she dashed under the barbed wire to get to the hen decoys.  Tom puffed up and tried to strut thru the fence and shortly figured out he had to deflate to get thru.  Once through he strutted into the decoys (2 looker hens and a 1/4 strut jake) and commenced to beat on jake while the boss hen strutted and pecked at the 2 hens.  A moment later a load of 9's stopped the show.

It was one of the few times I wish I had a camera running as I haven't had a bird, much less a pair decoy across the 100 yards of water in 20 years of trying.

[Yoteduster]

Congrats on a nice bird and a good story

[j.goebel]

Congrats on the bird!

[tomstopper]

Congrats

Sent from my XT1710-02 using Tapatalk

[shoer2]

Pretty bird congratulations

[joey46]

Great looking bird.  Congrats!

[Gooserbat]

Well done

[Sir-diealot]

Congratulations

[RutnNStrutn]

Congrats!!

[surehuntsalot]

congrats

[renegade19]