| Hunt Introduction This hunt takes place in northcentral Kansas, on private land that is part of the Mid-America Hunting Association, of which I am a member. The MAHA has over 230,000 acres of quality private land in Kansas, Missouri and Iowa leased for hunting by it's members. I've been a member these last 4 years and enjoy being in the association a great deal. I've had successful turkey hunts on MAHA properties in Missouri and Kansas the last several years. Tuesday A.M.  this is the winter wheat field I thought the turkeys wouldn't fly down into This morning I went to a property that I have successfully hunted for turkeys each of the last 2 years. In that time I have been able to become somewhat familiar with the area. It's gently rolling and is a mixture of wooded creekbottoms, croplands, grass cattle pastures and cedar thickets. There is a big creekbottom where the birds usually roost, all up and down for several hundred yards. From that spot they are able to either fly down to the crop field that is level with the bottom, or they can fly up to the ridge above the bottom. My experience in the past has been that if the crop field is in corn stubble, they will usually fly down to the field, but if it's in tall winter wheat, they usually will fly "down" up to the ridge. I learned on this trip that maybe those rules weren't so hard and fast as I thought. Last evening I went to take a quick look at the property and the field was in waist high winter wheat. I thought for sure they wouldn't fly down into that, especially if it was covered in morning dew, so I set-up on the ridge this morning. I got there well before light and had a seat, just listening. As the morning started to awaken I wasn't hearing any gobbles, so I got out my coyote howler. I did a few yips and a howl and there was a series of gobbles up and down the creekbottom in response. The closest one to me sounded like a mature gobbler, so that's the one I decided to try and set-up on. There were really only two logical places on the ridge for him to fly to from his tree, so I made a guess and picked one of them. I sat in a clump of cedar bushes for concealment and sat listening for the next 20 minutes or so. None of the toms and jakes I could hear were gobbling much on their own, and they weren't gobbling much in response to me either. Pretty soon I heard a bird fly down - there was just one problem - he flew down to the field, not up on the ridge. He gobbled once from down there just to let me know that he had tricked me. In order not to spook the birds that were flying down there, I made a big, half-hour circle to try and get around in front of them. When I did, I didn't hear any gobbling from the direction where they should be, but I did hear two toms gobbling pretty hard in a completely different direction. Unfortunately, they were across the county road on another property.  I set up against this cedar tree trunk to gain some manner of concealment I called to them a few times to see if I might have any chance of working them. To my surprise, they answered my loud box call yelps just about every time. I thought what the heck, I'll give it a try, so I set up on the closest nearby tree, a big cedar. To make a long story short, over the next 5 minutes I called and those toms came about 400 yards across a corn stubble field, the county road, and part of a cow pasture, gobbling all the way, looking intently for me. They were both mature toms, but one was a good deal bigger than the other one. They got to about 40 yards and hung up. I wasn't using any decoys and it was pretty open behind me so they could see there were no turkeys around. I figured they weren't coming any closer, so I dropped the bigger of the two. It was a nice bird, I'm guessing 3+ years old, judging from his size. He was 24 lbs. with an 11" beard and 1.25" spurs.  the tom came across this field and lays where he fell at the shot  my first morning tom - it's nice to get an "easy" one every now and then I didn't hunt any more today, preferring to start the hunt for my 2nd bird bright and early the tomorrow morning. I did, however, go out the last hour before dark and watch some birds fly up to roost. I watched a mature tom with a good beard fly up into a big Sycamore tree where I've frequently seen birds roost while hunting this property. I'll be waiting for him tomorrow morning! Check back for tomorrow's hunt!  I watched a big tom fly up to roost in the Sycamore tree in the center of the photo
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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