Wow, what a season we had here in Wisconsin this year. Started the season off with snow on the ground for the second straight year but the turkey hunting was far from cold. The main goal for this season was to get two of my sisters in to the sport of turkey hunting and also get them each a bird and I am excited to say that both goals were met while also harvesting 5 birds for myself and putting my dad on a beautiful bird of his own. Needless to say the 2015 spring season can not come fast enough!
I stared the season off on a ridge over looking a hardwoods bottom where I recently had an encounter with a couple of toms while out with my sister on the youth hunt. I had to get in there a solid hour before any shooting light due to the snow that was still remaining in this area. After a long slow walk to the ridge I immediately had 5 gobblers gobbling in the bottom below as soon as my butt hit the cushion. Addrenaline shot through my veins as the first few birds hit the ground and started working their way up to my set up. Two gobblers crested the ridge and I picked the lead bird and laid him down at 15 yards. My first bird in the snow and the first bird of the season!
Next up to bat was my Dad. We headed to wooded hill top surrounded by cornfields where I knew a couple gobblers had been roosting for the past few weeks. Without hesitation we headed up there and got settled in real early. By the time shooting time rolled around we had 3 gobbleres hammering back at every call I would through at them. The problem however, was they did not want to leave the security of the woods. After a short talk we decided to circle around and come in from behinnd them while sneaking up to them with the aid of the full strut decoy. The plan worked perfectly and my dad was soon posing with bird #2 of the season and one the was certainly earned.
Fourth week finally rolled around and both of my sisters were with us hunting now, both with a tag in their pockets. After countless early morning setups both girls needed a break. With multiple tags for this week in my pocket as well, I was estatic to get back behind the gun. I headed up to into a hardwoods that bordered a swamp and set up the decoys. As the morning sun slowly started to rise I could start to make out a big black blob in a tree roughly 25 yards away. A thunderous gobble quickly confirmed that I was where I needed to be. The decoys that I had set out were out of sight of the gobbler but after I scratched in the leaves a couple times he quickly pitched down out of the tree out to sixty yards, gobbled once, turned to face the full strut decoy, and came in full throttle to twenty yards where he stoped and presented a beautiful twenty yard shot that I could not pass up with my sisters 20 ga. After a few quick texts to friends and family, I picked up my set up and hauled bird #3 back to the truck with me.
Well a few days later (the Saturday of the fourth week) I set out with a decoy and the same 20 ga I used a few days earlier and decided to go do a little scouting to find out where the birds in a particular area where heading after fly down. Knowing where these birds were already roosting I decided to set up a good 500 yards away in hopes of just glassing the field but I had the decoy out incase a bird off the neighboring property decided to venture over. After a pretty uneventful morning so far I decided to just kick back and relax. Bad idea!!!! After a few minutes I heard two birds sound off in the direction of where I knew the birds where roosting. I lazily grabbed my binoculars for a closer look. To my amazement there was two gobblers on an all out sprint to my set up and there was my gun lying across my lap. The birds came all the way to five yards and I ever so slowly worked the gun up to my shoulder, put the red dot on the bigger birds head anddddd missed! I missed an unbelievably easy shot at five yards! Then to make everything even crazier the gun jammed! I eventually ejected the shell and quickly racked in another shell and this time connected on the same bird, now at thirty yards. I chuckled to myself as I thought about how just don't seem to learn from my previous mistakes of not aiming lower on the neck when a bird is in that close. After laughing about the miss I headed back to the house with bird #4 over my shoulder.
The last day of the fourth season had finally come around and my sister Meghan finally was able to come out for a quick morning hunt before school. We got set up on the edge of a muddy cornfield and began our wait. Finally a couple hens flew down into the decoys but as of 6 o'clock we had yet to hear a gobble. After the hens walked away my sister nudged me in the side and said there's still a bird in the tree about fifty yards to our right. i leaned over and sure enough, there stood a jake all alone now on the limb. A few excited yelps and clucks convince him to fly down into the field. We watched as he very cautiously made his way into our decoys. At about thirty yards he got antsy so I had Meghan take the shot. The gun went off and she was soon standing over her first ever turkey! After a few hugs and lots of pictures, she was carrying bird #5 back to the truck with us.
With Meghan tagged out I told my sister Ali that I was dedicating the rest of the season to getting her on a bird. As I was heading home from work that night I saw a nice tom with about a half dozen hens heading into the wood lot behind our house. I watched him and his hens fly up to roost and then headed home to tell Ali the great news! The next morning we were set up on the edge of the field listening to him sound off every time I would scratch in the leaves. He soon went silent which seemed really strange. Ali suddenly slammed me in the ribs and said "Ty there he is!" Sure enough, he had snuck in behind us and was about ten yards away from us and to our left. Ali was using a pair of shooting sticks to rest the gun on and was angled the wrong way to make the shot. I told her to just slowly get the gun up. Well her slow and my slow are two different things I guess because excitement got the best of her and he busted us BUT it got him curious enough and he started to walk right towards us! Ali had the gun up and he finaly started to make his way into Ali's line of sight. I leaned over and asked if she could get the red dot on his head. The answer I received was a loud BOOM and a flopping turkey at 5 yards!!! Wow did she show me how to shoot! HAHA! She was also standing over her first bird! Since it was long back to the house I gladly offered to carry bird #6 back for her.
Fifth week finally rolled around and I became absolutely obssessed with chasing a particular gobbler that kept giving me the slip every morning. He ignored everything I threw at him. He had one flaw though. He walked the edge of the same drainage every night back to roost. I finally was able to convince my boss to let me off a little early one afternoon during a bad thunderstorm to go set up along that drainage ditch. I didn't even bother changing out of my work clothes, I just threw my leafy suit on and headed out into the thunder and lightning. I got set up along the woods where figured he would enter to fly up to roost. But as his hens started to filter past me I saw him bring up the rear and start heading towards the woods quite a ways ahead of my set up. I was only able to coax him a couple yards closer and had to make a forty yard shot. He immediately went down and I was soon standing over bird #7.
The sixth and final week of Wisconsins season had finally come. I still had plaenty of birds to hunt but had an extremely hard time getting on them. As I was sitting along a field edge on the last Saturday of the season I got a text from a real good friend of mine saying he had a lone tom out in a field we could hunt and to get over there as soon as possible. I quicly packed up my stuff and a half our later my buddy and I were planning our stalk. The mosquitoes were thick but the brush we had to crawl through was thicker. After a half hour stalk up to the field the bird was gone. Instead of giving up however we decided to give it a try and set up in a swampy drainage ditch. The first series of yelps fired up a crabby hen that was nested not to far from us. Soon after the tom reappeared back into the field about eighty yards from us. He slowly strutted up to us but only came in to about forty yards. My buddy told me to take the shot if I felt comfortable with it. I had a very good rest as I was laying the gun across my back pack and slowly squeezed off the shot. Bird #8 immediately hit the ground as my buddy leaned over to give me a high five. The bird was an awesome bird to end the season with. He sported an 11 1/2 inch beard, 1 3/8 inch spurs and weighed in at 23 1/2 pounds.
This year was full of ups and downs but was by far the best season I've ever had. Watching my two sister harvest their first birds made my entire season. I absolutely can not wait to get them back out there next year. Thank you for reading!
Tyler
