CurtisWalker
Well-Known Member
My turkey season kicked off in Iowa on Friday. I met up with Rob and his son to try and get Dakota his first turkey. We came very close last year so the hopes were high. The birds didn’t gobble much on the roost and went pretty quiet once they flew down but we knew we were in the right area of the birds kept their patterns. Unfortunately they had a change of hearts and didn’t cooperate at all as sometimes happens during the early season . We did see a hen and 3 jakes though but none of them showed any interest in the decoys.
After hunting with Rob and Dakota. I drove back home and loaded my escape up to make the journey west to Nebraska with good friend Chase. I made it home with 30 minutes to pack before Chase showed up and we hit the road. We stopped at fleet farm to grab me a new gun sling and another box of shells just in case something went wrong and I needed more than the 3 I had. We arrived to where we hunt in Nebraska around 6:45-7pm and went right to scouting. I have been hunting the area for a few years now and have a good idea of where we can find turkeys but it’s always nice to confirm it the night before season opens. So we go to our first glassing knob and glassed up a strutter with 3 hens. Then another group of 3 turkeys that looked to be jakes. With where they were in the food we knew where they’d be heading to roost(not many trees in the area) so we left them to try to put some more turkeys to bed. We drove around and located a group of hens but they didn’t have a tom that we could see with them so we just noted where they’d were for a spot to come back to if needed.
We continued on and went to a roost area we watched turkeys roost in last year. Unfortunately we didn’t see any turkeys roost there or hear any gobbles so we had one option for the morning.
The next morning we made our trek in with a blind and decoys to the corn field we saw the turkeys in the night before. In the past the turkeys usually head up into the field after strutting for a bit below the roost trees. We knew it wouldn’t happen fast but if we were patient enough they’d probably show. Now some will be like you are using shotguns why are you using a blind. Well because we are hunting grassland turkeys and the property we are hunting has less than 50 trees on 750 acres so there’s no easy hiding. So we set up in the cornfield and are met with quite a bit of gobbling. Eventually it got light enough I could see the turkeys rooster through my binos and confirmed 2 for sure toms and maybe more in the roost. The birds eventually flew down and the gobbling continued. Before we knew it the gobbling was getting closer and closer until I could see 3 turkeys crest the hill and make their way towards the decoys. When they crested the hill they gobbled again and I knew immediately they were jakes. They had fooled us with great gobbles until they got closer. But there was another full gobble not far behind them so we were still hopeful. The jakes made their way to the decoys and began their tough guy acts strutting around and beating up the jake decoy before knocking it down and humping it. They got bored with it and moved on to the hen decoys and did the same. Some laughs were shared in the blind and they eventually left. When they got out of sight we decided we’d get out and fix the decoys and do some glassing as over an hour had passed and we hadn’t heard the closer tom anymore. We eventually glassed up a tom, Jake, and 2 hens moving down a valley away from us and we made the decision we’d try to beat them to the road they were about 400 yards from. We had to make it about 3/4 of a mile before they made it the 400 yards so we hoofed it made it to the road and got to the valley they were in. I peaked over the ledge and could see we had only beat them by about 100 yards and they were closing. I told Chase to crawl under the fence and be ready because they are coming. I decided I’d loop back to the next valley over incase they for some reason decided to go over top the hill rather than going to the road so I’m sitting there waiting for the boom and nothing so I walks little bit further into the property to another fenceline thinking maybe they turned and were cutting east rather than staying on their southern coordinates next thing I know I hear boom, boom. And I look back and see a tom running down the fence next to the road running into the fence with his wings out. So I take off running to catch up to this thing and try to shoot it a few times as it’s running and just whiff three times. I then see Chase running to join me and we are both after this tom next thing I know the turkey is turned around and sprinting at me and I panic when it gets to like 3 yards and just jump out of the way. It runs out and I try to shoot it again and my pattern the size of a golf ball flies next to it. Chase told me to save my ammo and he’d shoot it and he misses a third time and is now out of shells so I told him I’d get it and I miss with my last shot. Then Chase just tries to hit it and whiffs so I decided at this point I’m just going to tackle the thing. I chase it down and tackle it and Chase trips on my legs and falls on top of me and the turkey. We are dying out of breath but thankful we got the thing. 40 yards from the road. Turns out he had hit it with his first shot in the head and blinded the turkey but didn’t kill it and it went to fly and he shot it again out of the air with the second shot. The whole thing went western fast. But we were on the board opening day.
We had left our vests and the keys to the car in the blind so we were excited to be 150 yards from the car when we killed the turkey but then realized we still had to walk back and get the vests. So we retrieved our vests. Took some photos and headed to get lunch before heading back to the place we stay to clean the bird before it got too hot. Well on our way back to the house I spotted to toms right off of public and we could make a play on them and hopefully get them to cross the fence. We got in where we wanted to and they gobbled instantly. And next thing I know I can hear them spitting and drumming. Close like what seemed to be right on top of me. Then it vanished and they made it past us and gobbled again. We tried for about 30 minutes to get them to budge but they lost interest and worked off. Turns out they walked 20 yards from me but there was a little cut out ditch that we didn’t see that they walked in and made it around us out of sight. We got back to the house and Chase cleaned his bird and we took a little break before coming up with a plan for the afternoon.
We ultimately decided to go back to the property we hunted in the morning and grab the blind and decoys and walk another 3/4 of a mile into the property to a place we call the fence gap roost. It’s a corner of the property that’s fenced to where you can drive through it and move cattle through it and there’s a small water hole right at the corner. With it being 95 degrees we thought maybe turkeys would be stopping there to get a drink through out the afternoon and if not there was a roost that I killed my tom out of last year 100 yards away. So we got in and set up around 4:45pm and man is it hot. I forgot to switch boots and I can feel hot spots forming so I take my boots off and socks off to let my feet dry out and cool off. We have the windows in the back of the blind open to let the breeze in but all the mesh windows shut including the front windows. I have no service and am just sitting there watching the hill tops around us because we are down in a bowl but not seeing anything. I call once and hear nothing. Next thing I know Chase says “there’s a turkey right here” I think he’s kidding of course but he says no I’m serious there’s a hen 15 yards away by the hen decoy. So I lean forward so I can see out the front of the blind and sure enough there’s a hen and she’s walking towards us. She ends up walking to my side of the blind so I peak out the side window to watch her and there stands a tom strutting at 5 yards. Never made a sound. So I tell Chase there’s a tom and he of course doesn’t believe me but I tell him he should be able to see him out of the blind soon. Well sure enough he works to the front of the blind but something is up his head turned the all red color like they do when they are nervous and his whole attitude seemed like he was ready to bug out so I slowly grab my gun and begin to slide the mesh window open so I can slide my barrel out the blind and shoot him. He just slowly walks away and I finally get my gun up and call him with my mouth so he’d lift his head and I hammered him. Well after I shot three Jake’s came gobbling from where the tom was so we figured they had boogered him. I recovered him and he is definitely my biggest Nebraska bird to date and we were tagged out at 5:45pm on opening day less than hour into our afternoon sit.
https://youtube.com/shorts/uGB_lacWIvg?si=PHgruGQ27bT_6UmN
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
After hunting with Rob and Dakota. I drove back home and loaded my escape up to make the journey west to Nebraska with good friend Chase. I made it home with 30 minutes to pack before Chase showed up and we hit the road. We stopped at fleet farm to grab me a new gun sling and another box of shells just in case something went wrong and I needed more than the 3 I had. We arrived to where we hunt in Nebraska around 6:45-7pm and went right to scouting. I have been hunting the area for a few years now and have a good idea of where we can find turkeys but it’s always nice to confirm it the night before season opens. So we go to our first glassing knob and glassed up a strutter with 3 hens. Then another group of 3 turkeys that looked to be jakes. With where they were in the food we knew where they’d be heading to roost(not many trees in the area) so we left them to try to put some more turkeys to bed. We drove around and located a group of hens but they didn’t have a tom that we could see with them so we just noted where they’d were for a spot to come back to if needed.
We continued on and went to a roost area we watched turkeys roost in last year. Unfortunately we didn’t see any turkeys roost there or hear any gobbles so we had one option for the morning.
The next morning we made our trek in with a blind and decoys to the corn field we saw the turkeys in the night before. In the past the turkeys usually head up into the field after strutting for a bit below the roost trees. We knew it wouldn’t happen fast but if we were patient enough they’d probably show. Now some will be like you are using shotguns why are you using a blind. Well because we are hunting grassland turkeys and the property we are hunting has less than 50 trees on 750 acres so there’s no easy hiding. So we set up in the cornfield and are met with quite a bit of gobbling. Eventually it got light enough I could see the turkeys rooster through my binos and confirmed 2 for sure toms and maybe more in the roost. The birds eventually flew down and the gobbling continued. Before we knew it the gobbling was getting closer and closer until I could see 3 turkeys crest the hill and make their way towards the decoys. When they crested the hill they gobbled again and I knew immediately they were jakes. They had fooled us with great gobbles until they got closer. But there was another full gobble not far behind them so we were still hopeful. The jakes made their way to the decoys and began their tough guy acts strutting around and beating up the jake decoy before knocking it down and humping it. They got bored with it and moved on to the hen decoys and did the same. Some laughs were shared in the blind and they eventually left. When they got out of sight we decided we’d get out and fix the decoys and do some glassing as over an hour had passed and we hadn’t heard the closer tom anymore. We eventually glassed up a tom, Jake, and 2 hens moving down a valley away from us and we made the decision we’d try to beat them to the road they were about 400 yards from. We had to make it about 3/4 of a mile before they made it the 400 yards so we hoofed it made it to the road and got to the valley they were in. I peaked over the ledge and could see we had only beat them by about 100 yards and they were closing. I told Chase to crawl under the fence and be ready because they are coming. I decided I’d loop back to the next valley over incase they for some reason decided to go over top the hill rather than going to the road so I’m sitting there waiting for the boom and nothing so I walks little bit further into the property to another fenceline thinking maybe they turned and were cutting east rather than staying on their southern coordinates next thing I know I hear boom, boom. And I look back and see a tom running down the fence next to the road running into the fence with his wings out. So I take off running to catch up to this thing and try to shoot it a few times as it’s running and just whiff three times. I then see Chase running to join me and we are both after this tom next thing I know the turkey is turned around and sprinting at me and I panic when it gets to like 3 yards and just jump out of the way. It runs out and I try to shoot it again and my pattern the size of a golf ball flies next to it. Chase told me to save my ammo and he’d shoot it and he misses a third time and is now out of shells so I told him I’d get it and I miss with my last shot. Then Chase just tries to hit it and whiffs so I decided at this point I’m just going to tackle the thing. I chase it down and tackle it and Chase trips on my legs and falls on top of me and the turkey. We are dying out of breath but thankful we got the thing. 40 yards from the road. Turns out he had hit it with his first shot in the head and blinded the turkey but didn’t kill it and it went to fly and he shot it again out of the air with the second shot. The whole thing went western fast. But we were on the board opening day.
We had left our vests and the keys to the car in the blind so we were excited to be 150 yards from the car when we killed the turkey but then realized we still had to walk back and get the vests. So we retrieved our vests. Took some photos and headed to get lunch before heading back to the place we stay to clean the bird before it got too hot. Well on our way back to the house I spotted to toms right off of public and we could make a play on them and hopefully get them to cross the fence. We got in where we wanted to and they gobbled instantly. And next thing I know I can hear them spitting and drumming. Close like what seemed to be right on top of me. Then it vanished and they made it past us and gobbled again. We tried for about 30 minutes to get them to budge but they lost interest and worked off. Turns out they walked 20 yards from me but there was a little cut out ditch that we didn’t see that they walked in and made it around us out of sight. We got back to the house and Chase cleaned his bird and we took a little break before coming up with a plan for the afternoon.
We ultimately decided to go back to the property we hunted in the morning and grab the blind and decoys and walk another 3/4 of a mile into the property to a place we call the fence gap roost. It’s a corner of the property that’s fenced to where you can drive through it and move cattle through it and there’s a small water hole right at the corner. With it being 95 degrees we thought maybe turkeys would be stopping there to get a drink through out the afternoon and if not there was a roost that I killed my tom out of last year 100 yards away. So we got in and set up around 4:45pm and man is it hot. I forgot to switch boots and I can feel hot spots forming so I take my boots off and socks off to let my feet dry out and cool off. We have the windows in the back of the blind open to let the breeze in but all the mesh windows shut including the front windows. I have no service and am just sitting there watching the hill tops around us because we are down in a bowl but not seeing anything. I call once and hear nothing. Next thing I know Chase says “there’s a turkey right here” I think he’s kidding of course but he says no I’m serious there’s a hen 15 yards away by the hen decoy. So I lean forward so I can see out the front of the blind and sure enough there’s a hen and she’s walking towards us. She ends up walking to my side of the blind so I peak out the side window to watch her and there stands a tom strutting at 5 yards. Never made a sound. So I tell Chase there’s a tom and he of course doesn’t believe me but I tell him he should be able to see him out of the blind soon. Well sure enough he works to the front of the blind but something is up his head turned the all red color like they do when they are nervous and his whole attitude seemed like he was ready to bug out so I slowly grab my gun and begin to slide the mesh window open so I can slide my barrel out the blind and shoot him. He just slowly walks away and I finally get my gun up and call him with my mouth so he’d lift his head and I hammered him. Well after I shot three Jake’s came gobbling from where the tom was so we figured they had boogered him. I recovered him and he is definitely my biggest Nebraska bird to date and we were tagged out at 5:45pm on opening day less than hour into our afternoon sit.
https://youtube.com/shorts/uGB_lacWIvg?si=PHgruGQ27bT_6UmN
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
