A friend of mine is in the guards and participated in the Camp Ripley Turkey Hunt. He’s never really hunted turkey before (once before) so he called me and asked me if I would join him and help.
I arrived at Ripley at 4:20 Sunday afternoon and we were scouting by 4:30. We saw a lot of good birds in a lot of good spots while we were scouting for the next days hunt.
Monday morning arrived with perfect weather. We had the blind set up by 5 AM and could see two toms in the roost just 180 yards away. The birds came out of the tress just like planned and then hung up at 80 yards gobbling and strutting their heads off for the better part of an hour. I had to tell Chuck to calm down and breathe multiple times. He was shaking so hard I could feel it. I must admit, I had a little buck fever myself. Man that’s an awesome feeling. Eventually the bird moved away and we went looking for another active tom.
We had a few other birds respond to my calling during the day, but no takers. Around 3:30 we were driving around checking out areas and we came across a lone gobbler meandering along a path. We quickly got ahead of the bird and got Chuck set up for an ambush.
It worked like clockwork until the bird was about 20 yards out and caught Chuck moving. The bird made a hard left into a swamp full of dense underbrush. Thankfully Chuck is a good shot and my turkey gun is a turkey killing machine. At 40 yards the bird looked back and that was all she wrote. A successful hunt with a nice tom to boot.
