Friday, May 6, 2005

All but in the bag Mike and I have spent the past several days learning more about turkey hunting. Our seminar instructors? The turkeys themselves. Yesterday, Mike, Adam and I set up where we had hunted on Wednesday and saw several hens but no toms. I was still setting up shortly before 6 a.m., when two shots thundered off to the north. When the sound died away, I radioed my partners. "Just so you know, that was NOT me..." Less than a minute later, I heard clucking and before I could grab a box call, a bird appeared, walking from the direction of the shots. It looked like a jake, but I couldn't be sure, so I held my fire. As the bird turned to head east, I saw a one-inch beard. By then it was screened by brush. A few minutes later, it came back west and circled my position just out of range. Mike & Adam saw it cross the wheatfield they were watching, but it paid no heed to their calling. Adam later spotted a doe walking across the wheatfield, with a hen following close behind. When the doe stopped, the hen would stop. On they went that way, across 200 yards of wheat. An hour later, I had just moved to another tree to stay in the shade, when I spotted a bird slinking along about 50 yards distant. One split-second glimpse confirmed it was a tom, but it, too, was screened by brush, so I held fire as it walked steadily out of sight, paying no attention to my quiet clucks and purrs. On the way out, Mike thought he saw a bird in the wheat, but it disappeared. When we walked over to where it had been, a hen popped out of the four-inch-tall wheat and raced to the fencerow. We've seen pheasants duck down and disappear like that in short alfalfa, but that was the first time either of us had seen a turkey do it. This morning, hunting in Chautauqua County, Mike and I walked in on a gas pipeline right-of-way. I hooted once, and two toms responded. "There's your bird," I told Mike. He sneaked into the woods to set up and I walked farther down the right-of-way, hooted again and heard gobblers respond, so I set up and conversed with somewhere between two and four toms until 6:15, when they shut up and I never heard from them again. Mike later reported clucking and purring for two gobblers for the better part of an hour, but they eventually shut up and left. When he got up to stretch, he noticed a half-acre waterhole between him and one of the toms. This land is "perched,"since this is the top of a continental divide. Water runs down one slope and to the Great Lakes and on to the North Atlantic. Down the other slope, it runs to the Allegheny/Ohio river system and on to the Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico. We spooked one bird while "trolling" later in the morning, then set up again and passed the last otherwise uneventful hour listening to pileated woodpeckers, which provided perfect "locator" calls that went unanswered. On the way back to the truck, we flushed a hen off her nest, where we found seven eggs. She might make good gobbler bait in the morning. So it's back to the right-of-way tomorrow! On the way back to our sister Chris' house in Springville, we stopped to visit with Paul Locke, Sr., who had hunted this morning with his son, Paul, Jr. They, too, talked with toms, but did not put one down. Paul had some characteristically unkind words for the uncooperative birds. Hey, can they help it if they're in no hurry to die? Then, with my gas gauge on fumes, we drove north to Versailles on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation to fill up. A wise move, since gas on the outside is running around $2.30 per gallon. There, it was $2.01. Saved enough to pay for a car wash! Chris's son Woodson (four) and daughter Isobel (six) wanted to play "turkey hunting," so I dressed them in camo, complete with face masks, gloves and my boots. Too totally cute! When I get my program for editing photos next week, I'll post a couple. (Note to webmaster: Send program!) Woodson wants a complete camo outfit his size for his birthday. We may be looking at the next generation of turkey hunters! I'll take him if he can learn to sit still. Later... 7:20:56 PM    comment []

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