Day 4
We woke to a great morning with plenty of stars showing and a slight wind. We were up early to cover the mile to our starting point in the dark. We made it in plenty of time and were able to enjoy watching the final sunrise of the 2011 turkey season. We weren't hearing any gobbling as early as I would have liked, but thought we may have finally heard a gobble drifting on the wind from across a huge field. We moved to the center of the field and just before fly down, several birds began to gobble from several different directions. None of them were close, so we took off at a steady pace toward the closest. We were unable to get to him before he flew down. We were in the field and he was near the edge, but below our line of sight since the terrain dropped near the trees.
I was unfamiliar with the area, so I didn't' know how close we could get before he'd see us. We held back in a wash with a few bushes and one tree and tried to call him out into the open. He wasn't having any of that, so we ran part of the way towards him since we were caught out in the open, and then began slithering like two snakes to reach the point where the field dropped into the woods. By then we could tell that he had drifted into the woods and we should have made this move sooner, but it came down to not knowing the terrain. We moved to the trees and began to call, but he had doubled his distance and his gobbling. Again, all I could think was he was following a hen like many of the birds we encountered and wanted us to follow.
We moved a couple hundred yards again and onto the next ridge. He had moved even further, but seemed more interested. We waited. He eventually ended up just out of sight but within 60 to 70 yards. His last three gobbles were progressively closer from 100 yards, 80 yards, 60 yards, and we were prepared for him to crest the rise and walk into the gun giving us a last day bird. But...........as it so often happens, he never materialized. The next time he gobbled, and there was only one more time, he was 200 yards. I don't know what happened other than he was doing what a turkey does best.........act like a turkey and do whatever they darn well please.
Time was running out because we had worked this bird for near 3 hours, it was almost 8:30, and we had to be at the truck by 10 so we could check out by 11 and start the drive home. We had heard one of the other birds gobble a few times sporadically during our hunt for this bird, so we attempted to provoke a gobble as we circled back toward the truck for the last hour and a half. We managed to see one lone hen that I'm sure had a nest close by, but no toms were seen or heard.
The final sunrise of the 2011 season.
It's always a depressing day when you know you've just closed out another spring turkey season, but it was a good one like most of them. I didn't kill the number of birds this season that I did last season, but that is mostly the result of my kids coming of age and not for lack of opportunity. Isaac is becoming quite the sidekick and will want to do it his own way before I know it. Boyd and Olivia are just now wanting time of their own, but aren't quite willing to put much effort into it. Hopefully that will improve, and the only way I know to work on that is to give them as much opportunity as possible. That in turn means less time with my own finger on the trigger.
