Spring turkey season has flown by once again. This was a tough year for me. The youth hunt, season one and season two were all blanks. I called in a number of jakes and had toms just out of range for a 20 gauge but no shots fired. Bird numbers are definitely down but finding birds wasn’t the problem. Finding toms alone was the challenge.
Every year for season three, we have a group of guys/kids from Minnesota come over and hunt with us. There were eight hunters this year, with four of them being first timers. The rain that started during season two continued in to the first few days season three. The birds were very vocal every morning but once they hit the ground they were silent. Usually by 11:00 action would pick back up. We did a lot of running and gunning. By the end of day one we had one tom on the ground. We shot another tom on day two, one miss, and one within range but no shot. Day three was really tough. All the birds pitched off the roost the opposite direction we set up and staying on the neighboring farm all day. Day four we called in two toms right off the roost and they hung up at 45 yards. I made the mistake of having the shooter a little too far away for me to tell him to shoot. By the time I got the shooters attention, it was too late and the birds were moving back up the ridge. We had only heard the two birds we just called in so we started doing some walking and calling. We didn’t make it 60 acres and had two more gobbling right in front of us. We quickly set up and within two minutes we had another nice tom on the ground. That same morning, another caller and kid connected also. All in all, we went four for eight. With three of them being first time turkey hunters.
