Iowabow brought back a mighty nice gift from the Tennessee Classic where he had done some horse trading with a certain BuffaloGobbler. This amazing boxcall made the trip all the way from Tennessee to the Black Hills where it talked dirty to plenty of birds over the weekend. Over the course of the week, this call was carried and used for everyone in camp, but she saved her sweetest talk for me when I carried her alone one morning early in the week.
I had beebopped out of camp on pure adrenaline and caffeine, short on sleep, long on hope. I knew the general area of the roost site, but was a little short on time to get very close. I set up in a good spot with a commanding view, stood up a decoy hen about 5 yards behind my left shoulder and promptly pulled my most secret turkey hunting technique out of the velvet trick bag of experience.
Through years of practice, I am able to all but become invisible with this technique. It includes various disciplines of Eastern Mysticysm, Native American Holistic Spirituality, and Viking Berserker Battlecraft....simply put, I leaned back and fell asleep. Try it, it works. Brings the birds right in. Sometimes right past you if you go deep enough!
I was sawmilling old growth ponderosa pine when a "chirrUP!" startled me. I did my best impression of Elmer Fudd doing a Patrick McManus inspired "Modified Stationary Panic" when that cow elk stood there 25 yards in front of me with a look of sardonic bemusement. Apparently, I had not balanced the eastern versus western aspects of my technique or the elk would have never seen me.
It was about sunrise and I had missed flydown. Up the valley to the west came a few ringing gobbles and some mighty excited hen calling. I ignored the cow elk's dirty looks as I scooped up my decoy and hustled into the treeline to the north and began to gain altitude moving up the ridgeline in hopes of getting around and above the flock. When my wind was spent and I was wheezing like a demented pipe organ, I figured I was in about the right spot. I climbed up into a saddle on the ridgeline and leaned my shotgun against the tree, pulled out the decoy and crawled 10 yards to stand up the little foam bodied trollop.
Just as I was getting her planted, the 20 hens and about a dozen jakes of the flock crested the saddle about 35 yds away. They were yakking and blathering away to beat the band crossing over the saddle. And there I was pinned down in the wide open. Nothing to do but kneel there and take it like a whining toddler with a wet diaper.
As the last hen melted into a line of doghair pines, I turned to crawl back to the tree I had chosen to lean my gun before the gobblers. I had no more lined up on the tree when I looked at 4 jakes about 15 yards away. They had their heads stretched as tall as they could get to look at my shameless hussy of a decoy. I remember those days, all hormones and the inability to borrow, beg or steal a hint of good sense. I crawled back to the tree, put the shotgun across my lap and told the jakes to beat it. They all tried to gobble in their adolescent pre-teen pubescent voices, cracking like a box full of good china hitting the concrete floor. Again, I felt sorry for their testosterone overdosed libidos and again I told them to get a move on before the gobblers following would come and beat them like rented mules. They just looked at me and one said "Buck-AWP!"
I reached into the box call sleeve on my new vest and out came BuffaloGobbler's mighty fine raspy throated artwork. I chalked it up while these four horsemen of the apocalypse (in their opinions) just looked at me with their dopey faces as empty of expression as their bodies were of ability to breed hens. I opened the calling with a few chirps and clucks. No answer from a gobbler below the hill, but these four jakes all started milling around excitedly and yelping. I joined in with some lovely chin music on the call, yelping louder and more excitedly, ending with some aggressive purring. They were half strutting like a sophomore in front of the varsity cheerleaders when he thinks the upper classmen aren't watching!
So much the better, four live decoys and one foam strumpet. Any dominant gobbler would have to come on the run for this show! The poor jakes had no idea they were being used. I'd call, they'd join in and look at me, oblivious as could be. I told them one last time that this was their chance to beat feet before the gobblers showed up, but they still didn't get it. About then, the gobblers announced their presence...about 100 yds up the ridgeline with the real hens. I had been outfoxed AGAIN! It rarely happens, not more than 20-30 times a season, I swear! But I was beat and I knew it. These four jakes had been sent to fight a rear-guard action, their mission was to lay down covering yelps to hold the line while the rest of the flock made good it's desperate escape.
In the three flocks within hiking distance of camp, there had to be a good 25 or so jakes. I had seen several other flocks in the area with good numbers of immature gobblers, plus my contacts in Game, Fish, and Parks reported good to excellent hatch numbers last spring and better than average survival rates. Last year I had asked folks in camp to stay their hands on jakes because there were just so few breeding age male birds. But this year was a new year with new facts on the ground. I had lost or broken the last of the wingbone calls I love to use and thought about the smaller, more delicate bones in these four silly bodgers in front of me. In the end, I justified it by saying to myself the three survivors will be smarter for the loss of their fourth.
I laid the bead of the gun an inch below the snood of the one on the far left and the Pecker Wrecker blew his beak around to the back of his head at a mere 9 yards. I think I hit him with every last pellet AND the plastic shot cup! Clean and quick, Hevi-shot head trauma.
I'll stand and take every bit of razzing for not using a bow to hunt. But the fact remains, I am a pretty poor bow shot these days and it would have been unethical to loose a shaft at a living animal. I put this bird down fast and clean, I was tagged out and could go with the rest of camp when they arrived without them worrying about whether it was their shot or mine. I was done and out. Dave, Kyle, and Julup were coming in later that day and I could just play host.
