Well, Florida had been a hoot, and it had been great hunting, so I was anticipating the rest of the year going as smoothly and successfully as that. Then, I went to Georgia. It was everything FL hadn't been, even though I chose a WMA near Macon that had a good reputation and a high kill tally from previous years. Oh, I heard birds gobble, but they were usually off-property or so far away I couldn't reach them quickly, and once they got their hens around them after flydown, you wouldn't hear another gobble all day long. It was TOUGH, but then I killed a tremendous tom on a great afternoon hunt, then 5 days later I did the same thing. Here are my first 2 GA birds of 2014:
At that point I'd decided to hunt one more morning, then head on up to the mountains of GA to finish up my 3-bird limit. It was starting to get hot that far south, and buggy, and if I could quickly shoot a mountain tom, I could easily hop over to hunt NC and TN on my way home. I needed to be there by the 23rd of April for guiding commitments, but it was only April 13th....plenty of time, right? Ha!! The next morning I called in a tom straight out of the roost, but then I made a grievous and uncharacteristic error by letting the tom see me make my final barrel adjustment when he was strutting at 30 yards. The tom boogered out of there like I'd hit him with an electric cattle prod, and this left me thinking, "I sure hope that doesn't come back to haunt me."
Well, it did. For the next 9 days the mountains smacked my arse. I couldn't seem to do anything right, and the turkeys didn't help, either. They were acting just like their southern cousins by gobbling sporadically at dawn, then hushing all day. The only thing I had to show for my trip were these American Chestnuts that I found way back in a hidden cove of the mountains one day:
But, I left for home thinking that maybe if everything went incredibly well, I might still slip back down to fill that last tag. I don't like to leave a state without getting my money's worth, and especially a state that costs so much to hunt! Heck, the leaves weren't even out yet, so perhaps the birds might be more "normal" in a couple weeks. GA would remain open till May 15th, so maybe, just maybe......
Guiding my cousin's son (Tyson Torrence) in Indiana, I called in several birds up a steep hill. The first one that presented a shot was a jake, but at 12 years old, Tyson wasn't grading them yet, and we were both thrilled with his first kill. We also got a good laugh when my 12 gauge Benelli M2 knocked Tyson to the ground like he'd been bowled over by a George Forman straight right! :lol: Then, we intercepted another of the toms on the way back to the house, and I was able to shoot my own Indiana bird. Here's Tyson and I:
I had a couple southern Illinois tags in my pocket, so I then drove over there to an old familiar spot. On Day 2 I shot a tom right after flydown, so I hung him in tree and made a long, circuitous route over ground that is normally full of turkeys. Not today, though. Returning to the kill site, I took a few pictures, then set up amid two acres of fresh scratchings and called a while. It was now very windy, but at one point I'd thought I heard the "chump" of a turkey going into strut several times. Twenty minutes later I cut hard on a call and a tom gobbles CLOSE, and in only a couple minutes, I had 2 longbeards strutting in front of my gun. Here are my 2 toms, shot from the same spot, 4 hours apart:
Back to Illinois, I'm guiding an old friend (Gary Shepherd) and a new one (Louie Vennard) on Louie's farm. Gary has killed many toms with me, but Louie has never killed one at all, so he's to be shooter #1. On Day 1 we did no good, but a river-fisherman friend of Louie's told him he'd been seeing 4 or 5 huge gobblers walking the levee along the Wabash River every day at 10 a.m., so after we did no good early of Day 2, we drove over and I set up the pop-up blind right atop the levee, and stuck a couple DSD's 20 yards further down the levee. At 9:45 a big tom stepped up on the levee 150 yards from us, sees the dekes, and here he comes all fuzzin' n' buzzin'. At 100 yards I'm getting Louie's seat arranged for the right angle to make the shot, and at 75 yards we are all 3 telling ourselves, "this is gonna happen!" Then, all of a sudden the blind rises up over our heads and is gone. Louie and I are quite suddenly naked and exposed atop that levee, and staring straight at a very surprised gobbler. He didn't stay long, and it didn't take us long either to figure out what had happened, for there at the bottom of the levee lies my wadded up Double Bull blind, with Gary tangled up in the middle of it! He had somehow lost his balance and tumbled into the side of the blind, then rolled down the levee!!! Louie and I can't stop laughing, Gary is hung-dogged ashamed and embarrassed, and the turkey was simply gone, but after I got everything rearranged we worked several more turkeys across the river for an hour. I thought they might fly over to us, but the fisherman drove by in his boat and they backed away. I swear, that is the funniest thing I've ever seen in the turkey woods, and it just gets funnier every day! :mrgreen:
The next day Louie had to quit early and do some farming chores, so Gary and I went back at 9. It was so windy that day! I had to literally stake the blind down and then sit on its edge to keep it from doing the same thing (but for a different and more "natural" reason) that it had the day before! About 9:15 I saw a bird fly across the river 200 yards downstream, but at the time I only thought it "could've" been a turkey. Maybe it was a cormorant or something, but my initial, brief impression was, "turkey." Then, nearly an hour later as I'm literally lying against one side of the blind while holding out my arms to brace it against the wind, I swear I heard drumming! Again I heard it! Looking out 3 sides of the blind, I can see no turkeys and the only direction I can't see is towards the river, down over the levee...where Gary had rolled to the day before. I tell Gary there's a bird, "RIGHT HERE" with us, then hear drumming twice more. If I was hearing it over that gale force wind, the tom was obviously within 10 yards of us!!! Five minutes go by without anything else, but I just know that tom has seen the top of my strutter fan up over the levee top from where he's at, and it's only a matter of when, not if, that he pops up. And then, there he is. After taking a couple vicious swipes at my decoy, I tell Gary not to let him do that any more, and he hammers the tom from 19 yards. This brute weighed 25.5 pounds, had an 11 inch beard, and matching 1-3.8" spurs. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take any pictures. The next day we called one in for Louie on a classic hunt elsewhere, and the following day I shot my 3rd Illinois tom after Gary and Louie both had to leave early. Had a great time with Louie and his wife Lynn, along with Gary and his wife Karen. Here's myself, Louie, and Gary in the first picture, and me with my "half-cocked" gobbler in the second:
With all my obligations and expectations out of the way, I was now free for a GA return, so that's what I did. For a while it looked like the GA curse might still be upon me, but then I found a couple toms still willing to gobble and act like normal turkeys, and on my 5th day back down there I put it all together on a beautiful morning with low-hanging fog. Overall, it took me 29 days to kill 3 toms, but like I'd said earlier....I hate to leave a state without getting my money's worth, so all that time wandering around in her hill's 'n' hollers most certainly did that! Here's my final GA tom:
Next up was an annual reunion with some of my best friends in PA. Doug Pickle came up from VA, Craig Morton lives close by anyway, and Bill George owns a camp right there in Tionesta. We had a large time of it for 6 days, and all managed to kill birds, as well. Here are my two:
I then headed on up to Maine and before I ever hunted, I got my fill of the best fried clams imaginable at a little place called, "3 Bouys" in Kittery. Awesome good! Then I went hunting. Called in a couple jakes at one spot, but I was having a terrible time finding birds on WMA land I had hunted in the past, or any unposted land at all. Then, as I was driving around looking, I kept seeing signs around a place that said, "Access By Permission Only," and it gave a phone number. I get out of the van and am writing down the phone number when I heard a turkey gobble nearby, but since it's only 7 a.m. I think it's too early to call, so I sit there listening to the tom gobble his brains out. At 8 I make the call and the guy says, "sure you can hunt!" He was coming up to spray his apple trees and I wanted to meet him and personally thank him anyway, so I drove back to his gate. This is the view from there, except for one notable exception...the tom was standing just about in the middle of this picture when I drove up, and he merely walked off to the right and into the trees:
We stood around talking for a long time, then signed a "thank you" gift book for allowing me to hunt his land and we talked for a long time again, until the turkey gobbled. It was now about 10:30, so I said, "I suppose I oughta go kill that tom." Roger then left, I walked over to the corner of a field you can't see in that last picture, and within 15 minutes I shot this tom:
I then hunted around a couple more days, killing nothing but time as I awaited meeting up with a friend of Doug Pickle's (Les Peters). Les was a very interesting character, and we struck a bond immediately. He had a friend named Henrik who is a fishing guide and yet another interesting character (I think it goes without saying that most folks in ME share these traits!), and we also immediately became good friends. Les had been wanting to take me to an absolute honeyhole that Henrik had found, but when we finally get the chance, we heard not a single gobble. Les is amazed, as he'd heard no less than 8 or 10 the only other time it had been hunted, but it was a rainy day and not totally unexpected by me. We sat it out a good long while though, then tried a few other spots before coming back at noon-thirty. About 2 o'clock I called in a jake, then a few minutes later a barred owl lands 20 yards away and hoots...and a turkey gobbles. From that point in happened very quickly, but the gist is that we soon had 2 toms and 3 hens right there in our face, and here's Les and I with my 2nd Maine tom of 2014:
Finally, I traveled over to New Hampshire. This state is absolutely one of my favorites...beautiful beyond comprehension, welcoming to hunters, friendly citizens. I had a great time while there, but a combination of abysmal weather and difficult gobblers teamed up to keep me from finalizing the deal until May 30, when I shot this tom. His yackity hen flew over beside me and landed in another tree early, then really scolded me for opening my mouth. When I talked back again, she flew down and just about landed on my head, but saw me at the last moment and flared a bit, landing 30 yards behind me. This put me right smack dab in between her and the tom, and she really shouldn't have treated him like that....he didn't stand a chance at that point. Here he is in my final picture:
Well, that's the summary of how things went in 2014. It was a tough year for me overall, with much less gobbling than normal, and I noticed a strong proclivity for early gobbling followed by long hours of silence every place I hunted. This made for some long days of unexciting hunting, and in fact, of my 72 days afield, there were no less than 17 when I heard no gobbling at all for the entire day, plus a few others when the only gobbling heard was late in the morning or even deep into the afternoon. There were actually a few times when I thought to myself that I could be doing something else, but thankfully, such crazy thoughts didn't last long before I was right back into "turkey mode." Many of the toms we killed were absolute brutes, leading me to think there might just have been a shortage of 2-year-olds this spring (further reason for lack of gobbling).
Despite the difficulties, it was a glorious spring and I got to meet lots of interesting characters (both human, and turkey) along the way. I also sold and signed lots of books as I traveled around, and this further opened up lines of communication and friendships in state after state. I tell ya....I have had
so much fun because of writing that book!
In short, I had a great time and got to experience all the wonderments of spring in 7 states....what more can a turkey hunter ask for?!