JNRBRONC
Well-Known Member
After a 7 hour drive, Risto and I arrived in South Dakota early afternoon on Saturday, April 28. We hoped to get a quick afternoon hunt in and were set up around 5 pm.
We busted some birds on the way in to set up, but figured it was the best we could do with the time we had left that day.
We saw a string of jakes walking along the edge of the field in front of the blind, called to them; they turned around and went back the way they came. Later, we called a jake in and when he got into the clearing and saw our set up, he spun right around and left. We had carried bows in and no shots were offered. We decided to tear down and get out of there before it got completely dark.
We headed to a spot where there might be a flock of turkeys roosted and sure enough, we counted about 11 birds up in huge old dead cottonwood on a river bottom. We decided we would come back the next morning and set up close to the tree and hopefully call a tom away from the group after fly down. The cottonwood was down on a flat next to a river and we planned on setting up next to a gap in the plum thicket between the roost tree and the green pasture the birds were frequenting. We got there in the dark the next morning, carried the bows, blinds and decoys in and got set up. We heard some gobbling after sunrise, but nothing really responded back to our calls. After not seeing anything for a couple of hours, I snuck out of the blind to peer over the edge of the shelf we were on. The birds most likely flew down from the tree into the river bottom, then headed straight east, never able to see our decoys.
Next plan was for a little run and gun action, hope to see birds out in the fields and try to sneak in close enough to call them the rest of the way. Since the jakes were so shy the first night and we did not see any birds the first morning, I was ready to leave the bow in the vehicle. We drove to a place that had some valleys with trees. We dropped into a valley and a turkey gobbled back to a crow call. We headed after him up the draw, but he wasn’t the most cooperative, we never saw him. He must have had hen/s with him, as did most of the birds we encountered. After spending the day hunting this way, we decided to go back and set up on the cottonwood, hoping to catch the birds on their way back to roost.
We get back there and a large flock was out in the green pasture feeding. We dropped down into the river bed and tight rope walked the bank to get down to the cottonwood, then snuck up to sit at the base of a couple of trees, hoping the birds would come by us. I chose the left gap in the plum thicket, Tony the right. About the time we set down, the wind picked up and some nasty clouds rolled in from the west and treated us to a nice cold shower. It blew over quickly though and I was hoping it would get the birds thinking about roosting. Wasn’t long and I saw a string of birds working past Tony. One stuck its head up and I thought for sure he was busted. So did Tony and he hammered it.
While running and gunning during the day, we found a field that always seemed to have birds strutting in it. We decided to sneak in early Monday morning and set up before sunrise. I woke up at 4:39 am, started getting ready to roll. We drove out there and hiked back in, set up in the dark, hoping we placed the blind in the right spot. It wasn’t long and we started hearing hens calling and toms gobbling from the roost, things were looking up. It wasn’t long after sunrise and the birds started streaming into the field. We were in the northwest corner of a pasture, there was a river along the north, so we were in a natural funnel.
From the first days’ shaky start, I had decided to carry the Winchester Model 37A single shot 12 gauge 3 inch chamber 30 inch full choke shotgun I bought new in 1976 when the local hardware store went out of business. I figured I’d be the back up to Tony’s bow. There was a 2 year old tom in one of the first groups of birds that went by us (within gun range) and I was severely tempted, but I didn’t want to bugger up the set. Tony commented that it was the first time he had passed up a tom, my response; “Me, too!”
With all the birds working the field, we hoped patience would pay off. An old hen came into the decoy set and took exception to the DSD hen. She tried to peck the eye out of the DSD hen for so long that she got tired and decided to take a nap next to the decoy, 5 yards from the blind. We were so close I could see that her beak was so worn at the tip it was clear. She woke up and started pecking on the decoy again.
About this time, a 2 year old tom drifts in and decides he doesn’t like the DSD jake. He starts doing the posturing and bumping, I look to Tony and it is clear it’s not a bird he wants to Bullhead. The 2 year old starts acting jumpy and in comes a more dominant tom. I look to Tony: not white enough, he says (we are in Merriam country). I looked and saw the spurs, held my fingers about an inch apart at the back of my heel for Tony, which was what it took for him to decide to give it a go.
The 2 year old had taken refuge at the corner of the Doublebull blind when the older tom came in: we could have reached out and hit him with an arrow. Tony couldn’t see him, but he saw Tony draw and startled. This alerted the older tom that was now stomping on the DSD jake. All the commotion distracted Tony and the rushed shot missed. The older tom took two steps and popped his head up. I let the 12 gauge with a load of 5 shot bark and he dropped where he stood, maybe 15 foot from the blind. The roar of the gun essentially cleared the field. I crawled out and retrieved the bird and did a little decoy maintenance, 8 am now.
Around 10:45 am we were thinking about tearing down the set up, but then saw a tom with some hens were working towards us. They were paralleling the fence line along the river, moving from the far east end of the field to our northwest corner. When they got closer, we could see he had three hens that were ahead of him. They could see our decoy set, hear our calls, but wanted nothing to do with it. Two of the hens slipped off, so he stuck with the last hen, strutting all the time he followed her along the fence row. Back and forth they went, never coming closer. We were discussing whether to crawl to the south and circle around to head them off. Also, we thought about cutting the fan off of the bird I shot earlier (had some wire and a stick to spread it out) and belly crawling towards them. Or maybe just wait it out…..
Waiting it out won, so we watched them start back east along the fence. About this time, we heard a gobble from the west. Soon, another tom struts into view; he’s following a hen as well. When the hens collided, they decided to head out into the field we were set up in, leaving the fence line. It looked like they were going to pass behind the blind, which would have been pandemonium as we tried to close up one side to open the other. Luckily the hens decided to check out the decoys, one of them picking on the DSD hen again.
We knew we were going to try for these two toms since we had been watching them for so long. The first tom to enter the decoys was the one that had come from the west. Tony wanted the one that came from the east, so he waited for an opportunity to draw, with 4 birds standing in the decoys. He got drawn back, but didn’t have a perfect shot and waited for the tom to turn. The Bullhead almost severed the head, the tom dropped and had barely hit the ground when the old 12 barked, knocking down the other tom where it stood. It was 2 pm, almost exactly 3 hours after the tom Tony decapitated was spotted.
There was a lot of hooping, hollering and high five'n going on in that blind right then! Tags filled! Time to take some photos and relax a bit. We cleaned the birds, did some sight seeing and then we hit the interstate home a day early.
Pics of the ending double:
From inside the blind:
From outside:
Check out the live hen walking past our set up as I'm standing there taking pics. She is just to the left of the blind in the background:
Bullhead carnage:
The birds:
Awesome trip! :way:
We busted some birds on the way in to set up, but figured it was the best we could do with the time we had left that day.
We saw a string of jakes walking along the edge of the field in front of the blind, called to them; they turned around and went back the way they came. Later, we called a jake in and when he got into the clearing and saw our set up, he spun right around and left. We had carried bows in and no shots were offered. We decided to tear down and get out of there before it got completely dark.
We headed to a spot where there might be a flock of turkeys roosted and sure enough, we counted about 11 birds up in huge old dead cottonwood on a river bottom. We decided we would come back the next morning and set up close to the tree and hopefully call a tom away from the group after fly down. The cottonwood was down on a flat next to a river and we planned on setting up next to a gap in the plum thicket between the roost tree and the green pasture the birds were frequenting. We got there in the dark the next morning, carried the bows, blinds and decoys in and got set up. We heard some gobbling after sunrise, but nothing really responded back to our calls. After not seeing anything for a couple of hours, I snuck out of the blind to peer over the edge of the shelf we were on. The birds most likely flew down from the tree into the river bottom, then headed straight east, never able to see our decoys.
Next plan was for a little run and gun action, hope to see birds out in the fields and try to sneak in close enough to call them the rest of the way. Since the jakes were so shy the first night and we did not see any birds the first morning, I was ready to leave the bow in the vehicle. We drove to a place that had some valleys with trees. We dropped into a valley and a turkey gobbled back to a crow call. We headed after him up the draw, but he wasn’t the most cooperative, we never saw him. He must have had hen/s with him, as did most of the birds we encountered. After spending the day hunting this way, we decided to go back and set up on the cottonwood, hoping to catch the birds on their way back to roost.
We get back there and a large flock was out in the green pasture feeding. We dropped down into the river bed and tight rope walked the bank to get down to the cottonwood, then snuck up to sit at the base of a couple of trees, hoping the birds would come by us. I chose the left gap in the plum thicket, Tony the right. About the time we set down, the wind picked up and some nasty clouds rolled in from the west and treated us to a nice cold shower. It blew over quickly though and I was hoping it would get the birds thinking about roosting. Wasn’t long and I saw a string of birds working past Tony. One stuck its head up and I thought for sure he was busted. So did Tony and he hammered it.
While running and gunning during the day, we found a field that always seemed to have birds strutting in it. We decided to sneak in early Monday morning and set up before sunrise. I woke up at 4:39 am, started getting ready to roll. We drove out there and hiked back in, set up in the dark, hoping we placed the blind in the right spot. It wasn’t long and we started hearing hens calling and toms gobbling from the roost, things were looking up. It wasn’t long after sunrise and the birds started streaming into the field. We were in the northwest corner of a pasture, there was a river along the north, so we were in a natural funnel.
From the first days’ shaky start, I had decided to carry the Winchester Model 37A single shot 12 gauge 3 inch chamber 30 inch full choke shotgun I bought new in 1976 when the local hardware store went out of business. I figured I’d be the back up to Tony’s bow. There was a 2 year old tom in one of the first groups of birds that went by us (within gun range) and I was severely tempted, but I didn’t want to bugger up the set. Tony commented that it was the first time he had passed up a tom, my response; “Me, too!”
With all the birds working the field, we hoped patience would pay off. An old hen came into the decoy set and took exception to the DSD hen. She tried to peck the eye out of the DSD hen for so long that she got tired and decided to take a nap next to the decoy, 5 yards from the blind. We were so close I could see that her beak was so worn at the tip it was clear. She woke up and started pecking on the decoy again.
About this time, a 2 year old tom drifts in and decides he doesn’t like the DSD jake. He starts doing the posturing and bumping, I look to Tony and it is clear it’s not a bird he wants to Bullhead. The 2 year old starts acting jumpy and in comes a more dominant tom. I look to Tony: not white enough, he says (we are in Merriam country). I looked and saw the spurs, held my fingers about an inch apart at the back of my heel for Tony, which was what it took for him to decide to give it a go.
The 2 year old had taken refuge at the corner of the Doublebull blind when the older tom came in: we could have reached out and hit him with an arrow. Tony couldn’t see him, but he saw Tony draw and startled. This alerted the older tom that was now stomping on the DSD jake. All the commotion distracted Tony and the rushed shot missed. The older tom took two steps and popped his head up. I let the 12 gauge with a load of 5 shot bark and he dropped where he stood, maybe 15 foot from the blind. The roar of the gun essentially cleared the field. I crawled out and retrieved the bird and did a little decoy maintenance, 8 am now.
Around 10:45 am we were thinking about tearing down the set up, but then saw a tom with some hens were working towards us. They were paralleling the fence line along the river, moving from the far east end of the field to our northwest corner. When they got closer, we could see he had three hens that were ahead of him. They could see our decoy set, hear our calls, but wanted nothing to do with it. Two of the hens slipped off, so he stuck with the last hen, strutting all the time he followed her along the fence row. Back and forth they went, never coming closer. We were discussing whether to crawl to the south and circle around to head them off. Also, we thought about cutting the fan off of the bird I shot earlier (had some wire and a stick to spread it out) and belly crawling towards them. Or maybe just wait it out…..
Waiting it out won, so we watched them start back east along the fence. About this time, we heard a gobble from the west. Soon, another tom struts into view; he’s following a hen as well. When the hens collided, they decided to head out into the field we were set up in, leaving the fence line. It looked like they were going to pass behind the blind, which would have been pandemonium as we tried to close up one side to open the other. Luckily the hens decided to check out the decoys, one of them picking on the DSD hen again.
We knew we were going to try for these two toms since we had been watching them for so long. The first tom to enter the decoys was the one that had come from the west. Tony wanted the one that came from the east, so he waited for an opportunity to draw, with 4 birds standing in the decoys. He got drawn back, but didn’t have a perfect shot and waited for the tom to turn. The Bullhead almost severed the head, the tom dropped and had barely hit the ground when the old 12 barked, knocking down the other tom where it stood. It was 2 pm, almost exactly 3 hours after the tom Tony decapitated was spotted.
There was a lot of hooping, hollering and high five'n going on in that blind right then! Tags filled! Time to take some photos and relax a bit. We cleaned the birds, did some sight seeing and then we hit the interstate home a day early.
Pics of the ending double:
From inside the blind:
From outside:
Check out the live hen walking past our set up as I'm standing there taking pics. She is just to the left of the blind in the background:
Bullhead carnage:
The birds:
Awesome trip! :way:
