| Hunt Introduction This Live Hunt takes place on the ranch that a close friend of mine has near Albany, Texas, in Shackelford County, in the Rolling Plains region of Texas. It's not too far from historic Texas ranches like the Nail Ranch and the Stasney Cook Ranch. It's hilly country, and most of it doesn't look at first glance much like turkey country, with lots of low brush and mesquite trees. There are bigger trees in the draws though - mostly Hackberry and Cottonwood - and that's where the turkeys roost for the most part. I've never hunted turkey on this place before, and am really looking forward to it. Saturday A.M.  This morning my friend dropped me off on a road and told me to follow it until I came to the back corner of a winter wheat field where he's been seeing some turkeys hanging out during the day. He wasn't sure where they've been roosting, and so just said to stop and listen when I got back there before daylight. About 6:25 a.m. I heard the first gobbles. They were roosted about 400 yards off the back corner of the field. I moved up the road a few hundred yards and hooted on my owl call a few times. Each time I hooted the turkeys gobbled. There sounded to be at least 3-5 different toms. I found a fairly open area within a few hundred yards of where I thought they were, so I found a mesquite tree and got set up to wait for shooting time. The toms didn't gobble much, basically only when I hooted on my owl call. There were a lot of hens calling to them from nearby trees, and so I wasn't real optimistic that I was going to be able to call these gobblers in right off the roost. They started flying down a little after 6:45 and were still flying down at 7:30, and there were no gobbles at all after flydown. I did some intermittent calling during that time period. Much to my chagrin, all the turkeys flew down in the opposite direction from me. I could see them strutting on the road a few hundred yards away for 15 minutes or so, and they eventually moved off out of sight. A few hens did feed past me towards the wheat field, but they didn't have any gobblers in tow.  this jake came cruising by me this morning I spent the next few hours trolling along a few different drainages, trying to elicit some gobbles, any gobbles at all. Unfortunately, I was wholly unsuccessful. I did see a variety of other wildlife, though, including a coyote, half a dozen deer, and a group of wild hogs. The hogs were eating some aquatic vegetation in the creek bottom. If I'd had my bow instead of a shotgun with turkey loads, I would have had about a 12-yard shot. Instead, I just took a shot with my camera and said "gotcha".  these pigs were lucky on this morning  there are some nice deer on the ranch too!  a curious whitetail doe tries to figure me out  we wasted a bit of time fishing before lunch Saturday P.M. After lunch, a little bass fishing and a nap we headed back out this afternoon. My friend dropped me off and suggested I walk slowly up to the field I was at this morning and see if there were any turkeys out in it. So, that's what I did, and sure enough, there was a group of birds on another side of the field, probably 250 yards away. I didn't have my binoculars with me so I couldn't tell what they were, but at least one of them was a big turkey. I started calling off and on, and they ignored me. After about 20 minutes, they started moving in my direction as a group, but no gobbling at all. When they got within 100 yards, I could see that there was one mature tom and the rest were jakes - 8 of them. They got to about 50 yards and the mature tom hung up, but the jakes kept coming. The jakes came in to about 15 yards and after looking around a minute or two they lost interest and started to walk away. I started calling softly again, and this time the tom ran the jakes off and then turned around and came back on his own looking for this elusive hen. When he got to 25 yards I dropped him. He was a nice bird, most likely a 2 year old tom, with 3/4" spurs, a 9-inch beard, weighing 18 lbs.  I called my tom across this field - I shot him where the yellow "x" is  my nice afternoon gobbler We'll hit it hard again tomorrow morning. Check back for tomorrow's hunt update!
Joshua Flournoy owns and manages the Livehunts.com web site. Joshua resides in east Texas with his wife and four children. |
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