It appears another spring turkey season is going to wind down without my punching a tag. This makes two blanks in a row. That's what I get for spending most of my efforts trying to kill one on my own rather than with friends who are clearly better at this than I am.
I can't complain too much. I guess I hunted a half-dozen times. Actually, one of those hunts I didn't carry a gun as I was just helping with an NWTW Wheelin' Sportsmen event.
What will likely be my final hunt of the season came last week, and it was actually a good one to end on.
My friend Carson Quarles invited me to his place in Botetourt County. He was tagged out so he didn't even carry a gun.
We got on a bird at first light and waited for him to fly down. Carson does a lot of fall hunting and has deadfall limb blinds set up all around his place. He had one in a good spot to set up on this bird so we got in it and got to work. Actually, he got to work with the call. I just tried to figure out how I was going to shoot a bird as the blind was pretty high and it was going to be tough to get a clear shot unless the bird came into a tiny window.
The gobbler was in a hollow below us and pretty boisterous. Then Carson says, "There's a coyote walking down the road." Until that morning I hadn't seen a coyote in the wild. The thing came to within 15 yards, just trotting toward our single hen decoy. It looked huge. I'm pretty sure my load of Hevi-Shot 5s would have planted the thing but Carson didn't want to mess up the chances at the gobbler. The coyote didn't spot us but know something was up and eased off.
Next, two jakes came in. They were putting like crazy trying to get the hen decoy to move. The gobbler was also going crazy. We were just going to let the jakes call in the big bird in for us. Sure enough I heard crunching leaves behind us. I figured it was another gobbler. It was just going to be a matter of letting him walk past us so I could get a shot.
Well, the jakes craned their necks and flew away. It hadn't been a gobbler, but the coyote. Or maybe another coyote. Of course that shut the gobbler up for good.
A note here about coyotes. I hear a lot of poeple talk about how they suspect coyotes are killing a lot of turkeys. Can someone tell me how a turkey that can see a camo-clad hunter barely move at 100 yards is going to let a 50-pound critter sneak up on it? I mean, I'm sure coyotes get a few adult turkeys, but we hunters get a lot more. Now, coyotes probably do some damage on poults. But I see lots of young turkeys every fall on places I know have plenty of coyotes. I was already skeptical of how good coyotes are at killing adult turkeys, and now I'm even more skeptical.
We ended up walking a ways and struck another gobbler about 10 a.m. He gobbled a few times but then shut up. I was kind of surprised we didn't get more out of him because usually when you hit a bird at 10 a.m. that's a pretty good thing.
I had to get to work so we called it a day. Sure enough we spotted a strutter in a field as we were heading in. It would have been tough, but not impossible to hunt him, but I just couldn't stick around.
So, here's my thinking for next season. First, I plan to hunt turkeys a little harder in the fall. In fact, I won't hesitate to kill two if I get the chance. That will leave me only one tag for the spring. Knowing my luck, I will kill a bird on my first hunt next spring and will hardly get to enjoy the season. I guess that would be OK.
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