So this was the year - I bagged my first turkey on May 15th at 7:12 am
I'll now post the story mostly for my own benefit, so I can go back and look at it in the future - please forgive what I'm sure will be a long-winded narrative.
I've seen lots of turkeys
@Buckmaster Ben's place over the years while deer hunting, and this year wanted to give it a try. Went there for a 3 day on the last April weekend and tried my hand in the mornings, we did work details in the afternoons. One morning I went out and located a gobbler, started talking back and forth with him. He wasn't moving, didn't budge. I tried doing an end-around on him, no bueno, he bounced. Steady rain forced me back to the cabin early. Next day Ben and I went out together - he was calling for me but nothing really happened - we thought maybe we heard a flydown, but no gobbling. Next day I was very slow getting up, and as I was 4-wheeling out to the parking spot two birds flew right over me, one had a big old beard hanging down. They flew across the valley and were gone, heard nothing the rest of the morning.
From that time thru the first couple weeks of May my schedule was kind of full, so I wasn't available to try again until after May 13. I'd realized I didn't really know what I'm doing when it comes to turkey hunting. The thought came to me that I should ask
@switchhitter Greg for some help, since he'd already tagged out and has a seriously incredible turkey hunting resume. So I called him and asked him if he'd take me out and teach me, show me what I'm doing wrong, and get me on a bird. He graciously agreed to help. Discussing where to go, turns out that going back to Ben's made the most sense - I asked Ben for permission to bring Greg along and he graciously agreed, so we were off to the races.
We got to the property on Tuesday evening to prep for a Wednesday morning hunt. There was a bonus - Ben was able to join us, having rearranged his work schedule to allow him to work his sales calls during the day and travel from camp instead of home, being available in the evening. He and Greg had never met, and they got along famously - both experienced turkey hunters being able to talk shop. So Wednesday morning we climb on my 4 wheeler and drive to one corner of the property and start the walk before first light. Owl hoots drew no gobbles. We go a little farther in - no gobbles. Greg was seemingly disappointed. We made our way to a field edge and nestled into a spot where we normally put a groundblind during deer season. A few calls, no gobbling. Then we heard some gobbling to our right - and Greg said it sounded like multiple birds. I'm like "WTF?!?" but then he said there were jakes, probably 3 or 4. As they sounded off again and I concentrated on listening, I could tell he was probably right. As the calling went back and forth, it was obvious the jakes were not moving, and we didn't have a move to make on them - they were across the property line. It wasn't long before they moved on and we didn't hear anything. Greg was bemoaning having called at them too aggressively. (Hell, I didn't know, didn't have any idea, so he explained it. Seems I knew just a little bit about turkey hunting, but needed some help connecting all the dots, some perspective. It's good to have some personalized instruction.) So, we moved further down the property (downhill) to sound out some other areas. The only other encounter we had was in a wooded area, near a highly productive deer-hunting tree stand. We were standing on a trail and hear some hen sounds - I went in to the trees to close distance - I waited a little while, looking around, then took out my slate call to make a couple of clucks and some purrs. Then I turned around to Greg and whispered "And THAT is about the extent of my calling capability..." Then when I looked back around the tree, I saw the hen about 20 yds away, bobbing it's head and looking around. Behind a tree, I started making Keystone Cop hand gestures to Greg - pointing, then making 2 fingers then a zero (for 20 yds - he thought I meant two birds). The bird went uphill into brush and I didn't see her any more. Pretty cool encounter.
So at that point we were pretty much done hunting - having walked downhill all the way, now we had to trek back uphill to the quad. Nice long walk, then back to camp for sausage and french toast brunch on the Blackstone. Then we took care of a little camp work detail - a large cherry tree had fallen in the yard at the cabin, and the 25ft section of large diameter trunk needed to be cut into lengths for splitting (the rest of the tree had been cut up, but needed someone with a larger saw to do the trunk - that's where Greg and his 26" bar Stihl came into play). Later on when dinner came around, there was lot's of protein - some bacon, homemade sausages, and Ben cubed up and deep fried some gator tail, along with some shrimp. Sooooo much food.
Next morning was the epic hunt. We left about 20 minutes earlier, and went to the same area we'd heard the jakes. Owl hoots got no gobbles, again. Greg was surprised as light was coming on that nothing had happened, and again, he seemed a little disappointed. But then he perked up when he heard a bird sound off, and he was close. We were standing on a two-track at the corner of the field - I didn't want to go into the field to get to the spot we were the previous morning for fear of being seen, so we just hunkered down in the brush right next to where we were. In the pic below, I'm the green dot, Greg is the purple dot. The blue lines represent two-track trails thru the woods - there's a good 20-30 yards of trees and vegetation between the field edge and the roads, and the field is higher elevation than the road. So the light blue checkmark second closest to our position is where we guess we heard the first gobble. Greg answered, and then we heard gobbling in the same place, he didn't move. Greg went back and forth with him for a while, then it sounded closer! (1st check mark) then nothing for a while - then, Oh NO! it sounded like he was moving away - Greg answered again - long story short, it was an hour and fifteen minutes that Greg went back and forth with that bird, and we figured out that what he was doing was walking back and forth on that road, trying to get the hen to come to him. He actually turned that corner across the field and was calling from the other side (check marks) . There were some anxious moments as we thought he'd keep going and head off the property, but he came back and got on the original trail.
