Rhino Posted April 4, 2005 Report Share Posted April 4, 2005 After raining most of Thursday night I headed into the turkey woods before daylight Friday morning. Without hearing a single bird gobble on the roost and waiting past flydown time I headed to another area to listen. Within 10 minutes I heard a bird gobble about 200 yards southeast of me. He answered me twice but after only gobbling 6 times he just shut up. Henned up I guess. After setting up to try to work him without any luck, I finally tried to get him to shock gobble with a gobble call. Why not, nothing else had worked. Another bird answered with a strong gobble about 150 yards to the north on another ridge. He gobbled once more heading away on his own. I took off to close the distance and crawled up on a flat area on top of a ridge about 25 yards from an ATV road. He never answered any hen calls but about 30 minutes later after making a couple of gobble calls again I heard him drumming. It got louder as he got closer and then faint again. Finally I saw the gobbler step into the road about 75 yards east of me. He strutted a little and after giving him some light yelps along with some clucks and purrs he walked off to the east out of sight. Shortly after disappearing he gobbled going away so I answered him with a gobble call. Hey nothing to loose eh? He turned around and came right back toward me and blew up strutting in the road for a few seconds again. Afterwards he eased off the road into the open woods going northwest stopping for a minute or so to look around. He continued walking northwest drumming in the distance and disappeared behind a knoll. I gobbled at him again. Heck, he seemed to like it more than hen talk. His drumming started getting much louder as he was coming closer moving around behind the knoll. He was obviously going around the knoll to circle in on me. I moved to aim where I expected him to show himself and he just about stepped out right in front of my gun. I rolled him over with a load of #5’s at 25 yards. He has an 8 3/4” beard and 1 1/8” spurs. Strange bird that liked the boys more than the girls that day. I was hunting by myslef that day so I'm behind the camera. Saturday morning I took a friend of mine turkey hunting that had never killed a gobbler. He missed one hunting with my last Saturday. Where we decided to sit and listen we heard some hens lightly yelping on the roost between us and 2 gobblers. We also heard 3 other birds in the distance so we headed for them instead of missing with what was sure to be some henned up gobblers. After about an hour and a half of getting the runaround with a gobbler that didn’t gobble too much, we saw the gobbler walking down a ridge north of us finally heading our way. We called a little to him and he crossed a creek drumming his way toward us but 2 hens that we hadn’t seen lead him by us just out of range. He was intent on staying with them and they were steadily walking on. Nothing I did changed their minds. With the wind picking up to 20 to 30 mph we decided to try him again this morning when the birds would be more vocal. This morning we set up in the dark where we had seen the gobbler pass through Saturday morning. What we didn’t know is we had literally set up in the middle of 10 hens roosted close to 3 gobblers. 2 gobblers were roosted about 50 yards away and the other was about 100 yards away. The weather was perfect and the gobbling activity was the best I’ve heard so far this year. We heard birds gobbling in all directions along with the birds roosted close to us. At flydown the 2 closest gobblers flew down into an old bunching ground about 100 yards away and the other flew down into a hardwood bottom toward them. They gobbled their way towards one another in the bottom and then all the hens pitched down to them in the bottom. Talk about henned up! They couldn’t have been more than 100 yards away but we couldn’t see any of them now. Their gobbling activity died down after that and they all ended up somewhere close to the bunching ground. They only seemed to gobble at me a few times with the rest of their sporadic gobbling done on their own. They were just too tied up with the hens and those hens didn't want any part of us. We were stuck there with those birds so close so we couldn’t risk moving. Finally they moved a bit toward the northeast and a bird gobbled due north of us around 8:00. We backed off the henned up birds and headed around to try to find that gobbling bird to the north. We eased up an ATV road until we could just see part of a small food plot about 75 yards away. I cut on my box and got no response. I then cut on my Cody II slate call and he cut me off with a gobble. We sat down right there and a minute or so later he gobbled again on his own but closer now. I crawled back to another tree about 10 yards away to get better hidden leaving my buddy there with the better view of the show on the edge of that road. He watched him strut into the food plot in the bright sunlight and we could both hear him drumming. Great show! He gobbled once in there too that echoed across the ground. I delivered some soft clucks and purrs and the bird eased over to the southeast side of food plot and then entered the woods on a short spur ridge drumming the whole way. I started scratching leaves and saw him move back toward the road to come around some cut tree tops that I was trying to stay hidden behind. I wanted to make him search for that fake hen. He strutted into the road into my buddy’s view and he flipped him over with a 30 yard shot. His 1st gobbler ever has a 7 ½” beard and ¾” spurs. We have a new turkey hunter in the ranks now. He’s hooked! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoshM Posted April 4, 2005 Report Share Posted April 4, 2005 Re: All the trimmings and Double the meat! Congrats Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mach1 Posted April 4, 2005 Report Share Posted April 4, 2005 Re: All the trimmings and Double the meat! Awesome story. I can't wait to get in the woods here in IL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
huntn4bucks Posted April 4, 2005 Report Share Posted April 4, 2005 Re: All the trimmings and Double the meat! Congratulations rhino! It looks like you're getting a little more creative with your photos...nice job! Oh yeah, congrats to your buddy also. I've hunted 5 out of the last 7 days with very mixed results. One night it will get down in the 30s with 35mph winds and the next day will be 75 degrees and sunny. The last week has been very difficult hunting for me here in Bama. I'm glad someone had a good week/weekend! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhino Posted April 4, 2005 Author Report Share Posted April 4, 2005 Re: All the trimmings and Double the meat! [ QUOTE ] Congratulations rhino! It looks like you're getting a little more creative with your photos...nice job! Oh yeah, congrats to your buddy also. I've hunted 5 out of the last 7 days with very mixed results. One night it will get down in the 30s with 35mph winds and the next day will be 75 degrees and sunny. The last week has been very difficult hunting for me here in Bama. I'm glad someone had a good week/weekend! [/ QUOTE ] huntn4bucks I'm learning about the pic set up. Thanks for the lessons from you and Covehnter. The birds are still pretty henned up here but I was fortunate to find 2 birds that weren't. Just took covering some ground. LOL this week. Looks like the weather will be better than it's been the past couple of weeks. The hunting is sure to only get better real soon. I sure hope so anyway because I'm taking a 10 year old boy hunting this coming weekend and maybe Friday too. I'll hang up my weapons if I go back to our property this week until after I try to get him in front of a gobbler but I might do some serious scouting to fine tune my attack plan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dodge4x4 Posted April 4, 2005 Report Share Posted April 4, 2005 Re: All the trimmings and Double the meat! nice birds man.....we saw a lot this weekend, but the only ones in range were hens, with no beards. good luck the rest a the seasons! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buckbuster11 Posted April 4, 2005 Report Share Posted April 4, 2005 Re: All the trimmings and Double the meat! Man Rhino you are having a heck of a year so far....congrats on those two birds!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogdoc Posted April 4, 2005 Report Share Posted April 4, 2005 Re: All the trimmings and Double the meat! wow--congrats to both of you! Two really nice birds! todd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Posted April 4, 2005 Report Share Posted April 4, 2005 Re: All the trimmings and Double the meat! Nice birds, congrats to yall Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.