05/24/2005 -- The first morning I did
everything right. It was still good and dark
when I hit the woods. I spent a few moments waiting for the old owl to
sound off.
This, if I was lucky, would
make the turkeys gobble back in a kind of king-of-the-woods sort of shouting
match.
Before long, as the sky
brightened a little, an owl did indeed sound off.
The nearest seemed to be
across the river so I headed off for the next one.
Common wisdom is that it is
tough to get a bird to cross the water.
So, I sneak down through the
woods on a handy deer trail. The tom gobbles on occasion as I progress,
letting me know that I'm getting closer.
Eventually, I figure I
better stop and so setting up my decoy, I find a comfortable(!)
tree to put my back up against and start to do my best to imitate a love sick
hen.
The tom does his best to
convince me he's a love sick male and we spend quite a little time sweet
talking each other. Other toms in the woods are doing their best also to
gobble their heads off in competition. As the woods brighten, I can
eventually see him carefully walking around on a large branch of an oak about
80 yards away. Perfect I think, he'll hop to the ground eventually and
come right in.
The sun comes over the
horizon and I watch him give a last gobble or two and spread his wings.
He flies RIGHT PAST ME (slightly out of range of course) and keeps on going.
With his flight to the
ground, he clams up and so do all the other toms and I never hear another
gobble again.
Eventually, I give up and
head out of the woods. Better luck tomorrow I say to myself.
So
tomorrow finds me back at the woods. The owl hoots at the appointed time and starts
the show. This time the nearest bird seems to be on my side of the river
so I basically plank myself down and get ready for action. The decoy is
mere feet from my tree, but I figure if I can see a bird, he's in range as I'm
at the edge of a little bowl surrounded by thick gooseberries.
We (the tom and I) exchange
gobbles and yelps for a while, then as the sun comes up he goes silent except
for one gobble that sounded like he was finally on the ground and maybe coming
my way.
What's happening I think to myself. The longest three minutes in eternity go by,
then I see something moving and his head and neck (showing a long beard) slip
between two gooseberries. This is it and I sight down the barrel and when
he comes back into view let him have it.
That was about as good as it
gets I think to myself as I stand over the bird.
The fourth season was
another matter. I didn't get to hunt right away (when the weather was
nice) and when I was ready to hunt, it rained every morning. The first
morning, the owl made his appointed hoots and...no
return gobbles. Maybe I should be hunting owls. I had a recipe for
owl once, well, really it was a recipe for bald eagle, but you could substitute
owl if necessary (just kidding). He did a few more hoots and far off I
hear a gobble. I hustle down to that end of the woods and as I'm
traveling, don't hear any sounds.
Finding a likely looking
spot, I decide to just set up my decoy and see what happens. So, I putter
about, set up the decoy, get comfortable and produce a few calls from both my
mouth call and the box call. No responses.
Ten or fifteen minutes later
as the sun peeks over the horizon, I hear a slight commotion of a turkey taking
wind right over my head and watch dumfounded as a tom revs his motor and blasts
off from a branch right over my head.
That's pretty much it for
the mornings' action. The next day, I return to the woods and this time when
I hear a tom gobble to the south, a few minutes later a "boom"
announces that somebody else called him in. so I
call it a day (early) and head back home figuring it's a pretty good year when
I shot one bird and had the pleasure of hunting another one or two.
Two more swans at Worth County Lake. We now have another pair of swans at