Tuesday April 15th:
After arriving late Monday at the location I had chosen for us to hunt, we were disappointed to find the trio of gobblers I had seen a few days prior were nowhere to be found, and the only gobblers we heard were in a very difficult location to get to behind private ground. After discussion, the three of us decided to move to another spot about an hour away...which took us well past roosting time after dark.
Sooo,...we got up an hour before daylight opening morning resigned with having to go in "blind" without any gobblers located. On the positive side, there was nobody else in the area, which really surprised me. Having hunted here numerous times before, I was certain we would hear gobblers...just possibly not on the public stuff we could hunt.
We were camped in a location on a ridge that afforded hearing into two vast drainages and as the skies began to lighten well before sunrise, we listened intently for distant gobbling. As anticipated, the first gobble rang out from well into the off-limits big private holding...then another...and another. On the public side...nothing.
We gathered our gear and moved in the direction of the closest birds, which were several hundred yards into the private ground. I knew it would be "iffy" for these gobblers to come to investigate, but with no other options, we moved towards them and waited for good daylight and fly-down. We hit them with an assortment of long-distance calling, but as expected, it proved to be futile and after convincing ourselves none of the birds we could hear were moving our way, we made a plan to "walk and talk" along a ridge that ran for a couple of miles to the north.
We worked the ridge out to the end and back again and, although there was evidence that turkeys were around somewhere, we could not raise a gobble. Mid-morning we regrouped at camp, made breakfast, and discussed strategy. I was pretty certain that at least a couple of the gobblers we had heard on the private stuff were close enough to hear our early calling and I suggested we work back through that area to see if anything had moved closer to the property line.
A little before noon, we started back down that way. We had gotten only a couple of hundred yards from camp along the property boundary and I stopped and called. Gobbles rang out immediately three hundred yards into the private. Another series of yelps a couple of minutes later brought multiple gobbles that were definitely closer! We might be in business and there were at least two birds on the way!
We quickly backed up from the fence to look for set-ups. My compadres ducked into the shade of a couple of close-by cedar trees, as did I. Sitting down, I was concerned that I could not see much of the area down the slope towards where the gobblers would most likely approach and thought to myself "I should really take a standing position for this". The decision not to do so would soon come back to haunt us.
The gobblers were making a bee-line towards us and I thought that, assuming they would come across the fence-line, this was looking like a done deal. Expecting them to show on the slope below us at any second, I was kind-or surprised that they suddenly stopped advancing about a hundred yards away and still out of sight. Calling sporadically every few minutes, they would gobble but were hung up.
Playing the "silent treatment" game is not my forte, but after a bit, it was apparent that something besides what we were doing was needed, so we just shut-up. We waited...and waited...and waited. No gobblers approaching...at least not where me and one of my friends were sitting.
After a while, I was giving up on the gobblers showing so I called again to see if they would answer. Nothing. We waited. I called again. Nothing. In my mind, the gobblers had faded back away and were gone. The two of us to the right side looked at each other and started gathering our gear to move on. Our buddy to the left, who was just out of sight from us, finally got up and walked over to us.
As it turned out, what we on the right side could not see is that three mature gobblers had come up the slope just out of sight from us, had crossed the fence, and circled around above us...all the time being completely silent. They had come and gone without the two of us knowing they were anywhere around. Our "left-side" buddy had not taken the gimmee shot they had offered him, thinking that the other two of us were aware they were close and we might be able to also get shots, as well. (Back to my point about thinking I should have taken a standing position...I would have seen them coming and the outcome would likely have been totally different).
We worked the area a while longer without raising another response and eventually returned to camp for an afternoon break. We basically wimped out on hunting anymore in the afternoon. Right before dark, we each went separate ways to try to roost gobblers. As luck would have it, at least two gobblers roosted on the public side on a ridge not far from our camp in a spot I knew quite well from past hunts here.
A plan was made for the next morning...
