|
The Hunt Begins! This mornings hunt was very exciting but very frustrating. Turkey hunting is like that sometimes, eh? Last evening I watched through my binoculars 29 turkeys fly up to roost in a big tree on the edge of the field they were playing around in yesterday afternoon. That was good and bad. Good because I knew exactly where they should be come the morning. Bad because that edge of the field had hardly any brush along the fence row where I wanted to set up. I wanted to set up there because they had been over there a lot yesterday afternoon. I determined that if I was going to try to get some good photos that I should set up my ICE Blind. The tricky thing was that I would have to set it up in full view of their roost tree, to have it beside any brush at all. Granted, it would be dark, but with almost a full moon and having to set the blind up within 100 yards of their roost tree made me a little nervous.  The sun was supposed to rise at 5:54 this morning, so I determined to be starting to set my blind up no later than 4:30, in case anything went wrong, to give the birds time to settle down a bit and forget whatever might have disturbed them. I was able to set the blind up without too much noise or movement, although what little it did make set a few of the hens to putting a little bit. Nothing real alarmed, and they stopped and settled down within 5 minutes or so. Now all I had to do was wait for fly-down time.   I didn't know for sure how many tom's there were. Only one was gobbling much, and a few others occasionally cut in. As it began to get light, I could clearly see the birds on their limbs, and I was able to identify at least 2 different tom's. This was only the second time I've ever actually been able to watch turkeys wake up on the roost, and the hens were yelping something serious. The two tom's I could see were actually strutting and spitting and drumming on their limbs! I thought that was pretty funny. They couldn't even wait to get down on the ground before showing off. The first bird flew down at about 6:00, the others took their cue, and all the birds were on the ground less than 30 seconds after the first one flew down. Wouldn't you know they landed about 10-15 yards past my maximum range of 35-40 yards, and instead of going to where I had seen them the afternoon before, they went the opposite direction, farther out into the field. I was wishing I had been able to watch them in the morning on the day before, instead of the afternoon. Immediately they broke up into about 3 groups, with a couple toms for each group. None of the 3 groups ever was out of my sight, never going more than about 500 yards or so from my blind. The group with the big boss tom was the group nearest to my blind (80-100 yards away), so I tried calling the boss in. Surprisingly (to me), he took notice immediately and gobbled in response to my calls. After about a minute I was able to convince him to start heading my way, but instead of heading straight for me he parralleled me. I'm not sure if my calling from inside the blind made it seem like it was coming from a different direction or what, but he never came closer than 50 yards, even though he walked all the way over to the fenceline my blind was on, gobbling all the way. When he didn't find his hen (me) over there, he headed back towards his group and I couldn't coax him over a second time. Within an hour or so after fly-down, it was pretty clear to me that where I was situated was outside of their strut zone. The zone was about 100 yards from me, and that tom and several others would strut back and forth, up and down what seemed like an imaginary line, never deviating to the right or left. They gobbled in response to my calls quite a bit, but I couldn't coax them over.   This was my blind set-up. As you can see there wasn't much cover They strutted up and down that line for the next 5 hours, while I sat in my blind waiting for one of the toms to come closer than 60 or 70 yards, but it was not to be. Several times when they were on one end of their strut zone they were almost out of my sight and I determined if I was going to get a shot I was going to have to get out my blind and move along the creek brush to get closer to that zone. About 11:00 I was finally able to do it and only about 2 birds saw me and they weren't too alarmed. Pretty quickly I had a run-in with 5 jakes that I hadn't seen bedded inside the edge of the woods. They came as close as 15 feet but I just crouched very still, and after a few minutes they settled down. After that when I was trying to get into position I got busted from behind, a turkey I hadn't seen started putting pretty loud. The turkeys in the field looked over, but didn't seem too alarmed. Wouldn't you know, though, that once I got set up in my new spot they decided to head out the opposite end of the field to go find some mid-day shade in a grove of cedar trees.  couldn't resist taking this shot of the valley I'm hunting  that green field at the bottom of the photo is where I hunted this morning That was the end of my morning hunt. I really did enjoy getting to see so many turkeys in the wide open for several hours. It was quite interesting, and at times amusin, to watch their behavior. One thing I learned is that sometimes the real hens yelp pretty badly! They sound like the worst calls a turkey hunter could make. I guess in turkey hunting, like in elk hunting, what you hear at the calling contests are not always what you hear in the field. Incidentally, speaking of elk, I saw a herd of 15 in the alfalfa field where I was set up this morning. Unfortunately, they were too far away to get a good photo.   This afternoon we went up on the mountain opposite the field I'm hunting to look for deer and antelope. We saw some of both. Then we went to the rim to try and spot turkeys about 1,000 feet below. We saw about a dozen birds altogether in 4 different groups. I may try to tackle some of them on Tuesday morning.  I went to the field this evening with my binoculars and watched the turkeys fly up to the same tree as last evening, so I'm headed back out there in the morning, except this time I'm going to leave the blind and take myself and situate from the start where I moved to later this morning. I hope I have some good results to report tomorrow night. Check back! |
| Trip Notes Our Turkey hunt takes place in Union County, New Mexico on private land with A&M Adventures, between the towns of Clayton and Raton, New Mexico. The ranch is a mixture of plateaus and canyons with a variety of terrain and vegetation. A&M Adventures also has trophy Elk, Mule Deer, and Pronghorn Antelope hunts. They have some really mature animals, which means there are some big boys. If you'd be interested in setting up a hunt with A&M Adventures, you can visit their web site at: Equipment I'm shooting a Remington 870 Express on this hunt. The loads I'm shooting are Remington 2 oz. #6's, 3 inch. |
e-mail Joshua Flournoy     |
Copyright © 1997 Hunting Information Systems, All Rights Reserved.
Terms under which this information is provided to you.