Just coming off of a great weekend hunting birds in WI with my son and a friend’s boy. Birds were henned-up pretty tight, with most groups being 15-20 birds. We were able to roost them the night before the opener pretty well, and had a blind setup with both kids inside by 5:30AM to hear some serious gobbling right below us. It was cold, about 31 degrees, so the boys were doing their best to fight off the chill and keep interest. By 7AM, interest gave way to sleep, and not 3 minutes after I let my oldest son Isaac get off of his chair and lay down, two hens and a tom come trudging up the hill road below us. What ensued was somewhat chaotic, with Isaac getting up on his knees, the bird failing to break strut despite my best cutts, and some boogery birds that didn’t like our dekes…then, a shot, and the bird flew away. We gave chase some time after, but there wasn’t much but a few feathers to be found.
The big group was still below us and working their way across a hillside, so we scooted about 1/2 mile to another alfalfa field edge where a ravine comes up towards the top. This funnel has brought birds fieldside in the past, and we weren’t surprised when we bumped a lone gobbling tom by moving a touch too quickly. We went right to where he entered the woods, and got setup, hoping to attract the birds that were hopefully just below the hill but not yet in the field. We were greeted by gobbling instantly. Within 5 minutes, we had 5 strutters entering 15 yards over our left shoulders with no blind to conceal the 10 yr olds movements. Everything that happened next was somewhat of a blur, as toms circled, criss-crossed, and hung together tight, in and out of strut. Isaac’s friend Jadan shot, and crumpled his bird, then Isaac took a hurried shot, more to make the gun go “boom” than anything. As I recall, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t even aiming, and was just hoping that with so many toms out in front of him, one would surely go down. Well none others did. It was Jadan’s shot, as Isaac got his chance earlier, but that much commotion and required re-action wasn’t something that came easy to him. Understandable. I was pretty worked up too, and I think we need to work on just pointing and aiming; acquiring targets more quickly and switching aiming points more rapidly. Something to work towards for later!
The hunt was far from over, but some success led to hungry boys, so we had breakfast and headed back to the field. On the way, we saw a group of toms and hens below the ridge we were hunting and another hayfield. We snuck down the ridge to them from up top, got into a saddle just below the ridge, and did some calling. The hens did NOT like me, and took their boys away, gobbling the whole way. But not before we split a jake off from the pack. The bird committed to just 20 yards, but he came left of where I thought and was in some thick cover. Isaac took his time, leveled a shot, and put him down hard. Or so we thought, as the bird got up and hobbled off down the hill before we finally caught up with him and he was able to take him down for good without another shot needed. That bird had a broken leg, broken wing, a badly bleeding head and what I found to be pellets in his heart when we were cleaning him. TOUGH bird, but harvested just the same.
We had a great hunt, and it was only 12:30PM on opening day. I was happy to see both of them get their first birds!
Joel
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