Trevman
04-21-2014, 09:37 AM
Made the trek into BC for the turkey opener last week with Stuferdog looking for my first bird.
We arrived mid afternoon on Monday the day before to try and locate some birds and roost them, so that we had a starting point for the opener. It was pretty slow going for the first couple of hours till we happened upon 14 jakes and 4 hens working their way back to the roost.
We very quickly found who owned the property to get permission, and lucky for us the person who had permission for the opener had just called and was not going to make it :), so the land owner asked lots of questions then decided to give us the OK, but warned us that his place on the opener has been known to be a s#!% show because most don't get permission they just shoot grab and go. At the time we thought this was just idle chatter from the land owner.
Come morning we got to the place a bit later than we wanted (sun just coming up on the horizon) but the birds were still on the roost. The scenario is that the birds roosted on the west side of a little road allowance and pitched down across it into a bigger field. We setup a Jake and 2 hen decoys and settled in. Well within 5 minutes of sitting we had 5 trucks come by us, and even had one guy get out and shoulder on our decoys, till we yelled at him and he jumped back into his truck and took off. Thinking the jig was up we packed up and got back to the truck, just in time to watch the last 3 birds pitch down and head the opposite direction than they had for the last week.
Time to get aggressive...so we made a decent circle around and into the bush in hopes of cutting off the birds, and as we crested this little hill...BINGO all 30 birds, 14 of which were strutting within 50 yards! We decided to circle out a bit further and get in front of the birds and call them to us.
Fast forward 20-25 mins we are in position and start calling and within 4 minutes in walks a lone bird in full strut, spitting and drumming. Now what in real life took about 2 minuets but to me felt like 2 hours this bird slowly strutted into position....right behind a little beat up bush at 22 yards! I'm thinking to myself he needs to take 2 more steps and he will be in a small clearing and he's mine....one step and the shakes start all over again...one step back...one step forward...yes...yes...yes 2nd step BANG! Turkey down!
After that we worked 3 other birds for about another 45 mins from the same spot, but they kept hanging up at about 50 yards, and all we could see was bits and pieces of them.
Stufferdog got his bird later in the day as we cut off some birds working back to the roost, which was awesome because we had zero options for day two until we found those birds
Best part is I got the whole thing on camera for future enjoyment, and a new desire to get out there again next year...hopefully this time for a long beard.
Bring on the big Eastern's in 2 weeks in Massachusetts
We arrived mid afternoon on Monday the day before to try and locate some birds and roost them, so that we had a starting point for the opener. It was pretty slow going for the first couple of hours till we happened upon 14 jakes and 4 hens working their way back to the roost.
We very quickly found who owned the property to get permission, and lucky for us the person who had permission for the opener had just called and was not going to make it :), so the land owner asked lots of questions then decided to give us the OK, but warned us that his place on the opener has been known to be a s#!% show because most don't get permission they just shoot grab and go. At the time we thought this was just idle chatter from the land owner.
Come morning we got to the place a bit later than we wanted (sun just coming up on the horizon) but the birds were still on the roost. The scenario is that the birds roosted on the west side of a little road allowance and pitched down across it into a bigger field. We setup a Jake and 2 hen decoys and settled in. Well within 5 minutes of sitting we had 5 trucks come by us, and even had one guy get out and shoulder on our decoys, till we yelled at him and he jumped back into his truck and took off. Thinking the jig was up we packed up and got back to the truck, just in time to watch the last 3 birds pitch down and head the opposite direction than they had for the last week.
Time to get aggressive...so we made a decent circle around and into the bush in hopes of cutting off the birds, and as we crested this little hill...BINGO all 30 birds, 14 of which were strutting within 50 yards! We decided to circle out a bit further and get in front of the birds and call them to us.
Fast forward 20-25 mins we are in position and start calling and within 4 minutes in walks a lone bird in full strut, spitting and drumming. Now what in real life took about 2 minuets but to me felt like 2 hours this bird slowly strutted into position....right behind a little beat up bush at 22 yards! I'm thinking to myself he needs to take 2 more steps and he will be in a small clearing and he's mine....one step and the shakes start all over again...one step back...one step forward...yes...yes...yes 2nd step BANG! Turkey down!
After that we worked 3 other birds for about another 45 mins from the same spot, but they kept hanging up at about 50 yards, and all we could see was bits and pieces of them.
Stufferdog got his bird later in the day as we cut off some birds working back to the roost, which was awesome because we had zero options for day two until we found those birds
Best part is I got the whole thing on camera for future enjoyment, and a new desire to get out there again next year...hopefully this time for a long beard.
Bring on the big Eastern's in 2 weeks in Massachusetts