Nate Meyer's Weblog

After not getting a turkey last year, i was pretty excited and anxious to get one this year.  My main fault at not getting one last year was that i had 0 patience.  This year i was determined to get out early, and stay late. 

Here’s how it all went down:

Got to Jims around 5:10am.  Him and I left, and he dropped me off at a bush that i’ve never been to before.  He said that he saw a few turkeys here a couple weeks ago, and gave me a suggestion on where to setup, then i started the 1/4 mile walk out to the bush.  I decided to setup in a hedge / fence row leading away from the bush, then setup my decoy closer to the bush.  The "corner" of the bush was about 40-50 yards away.

Here’s the THORNE bush that i was sitting in.

And here’s the view that i got when sitting in my bush.  The bottom picture is the corner of the bush that i mentioned above.  You can see my decoy dead center of the first picture.  About 20 yards from me, and 40 yards from the corner of the bush. 

The next picture will show the path of the birds, etc.  I’ll show the pic first, then explain how the morning went down.

The red X is where i was sitting, and i was facing the corner, and "end" of the bush.  At around 6:30, i saw 2 white tailed deer walk RIGHT past me, and into the corner of the bush.  Then around 7am, flew out and landed right before my decoy.  The blue line in the upper picture shows the PATH of the hens.  They stayed around my decoy for 10-15 minutes, and making a racket!  Then they took off to the EAST and turned the corner and i couldn’t see them anymore.  At this time, 2 coyotes came out of the bush and walked RIGHT towards me, then walked right past me!  Let me tell you, i had my finger on the trigger just in case, lol. 

It was pretty quiet from 7:30 till around 9am.  I could hear the TOM gobble from about the middle of the forest (start of the green line), and walk to the east of the forest.  I think the TOM and the HENS mingled for a bit where the PINK x is.  Then the hens retraced their steps and of course, the TOM followed.  Around 9am, i saw the hens peak around the edge of the forest.  Instantly i got into position, raised my gun slowly and waited.  I was hoping the TOM would be right behind them.  And he was.  As you can see by the blue line, the hens walked right in front of me, and into the bush.  About 50 yards behind them, was a big TOM!  I was SO anxious and nervous, although i did control it by breathing properly, etc.  After 10 minutes the TOM made it to within shooting distance.  I think it was a pretty good shot, he jumped around for a bit, but then he was down.  I haven’t seen any pellets in the breast at all yet.

What an awesome experience!  I loved it.  Might even buy another tag and head out again.  The bird weighed in at 16 lbs!  7-8" Beared!