Well boys,I broke all the rules today.
I am 47 years old and this is my 28th turkey season. My turkey hunting mentor was, shall I say, old school, and followed a self-established "code" as it pertains to turkey hunting. He wanted to kill a turkey in the purest of ways which was calling them in the woods to gun or bow range. The code was:
Never shoot a turkey in a tree.
Don't shoot jakes
Never shoot a turkey on the wing
Dont use decoys
Don't ambush a turkey
Don't sit on a green field all day waiting for a turkey to pop his head out and walk into a decoy setup
In general(I've sinned a few times)I've followed this code,specifically the last 10 yearsin honor of my buddywhodied unexpectantly 11 years ago. Then my young son (now 12) started turkey hunting2 years agoandI decided to use decoys when hunting with him (Thisisn'ta code violation since it involves a kid).
I bought a B-Mobile for the early youth hunt and my sonkilled a nice turkey (his first)last Saturday (posted in another thread). That turkey seemed really interested in getting to know B-Mobile before tragically running into a swarm of Hevi-Shot, so Ibrought B-Mobile along this morning for the opening of the Tennessee statewide season.
The day broke cold (47 degrees), raining and windy. That didn't seem to matter much because I heard quite a lot of gobbling. Unfortunately the birds were on adjacent property that I didn't have permission to hunt and eventually the gobblers got with hens and quit gobbling. Around 9am I was shaking from the cold and it started to rain.On my walk in IhidB-Mobile and two of hislady-friendsin a covered "box" deer stand that was in a green field surrounded by woods, and the thought of sitting in that nice, dry deer stand seemed pretty appealing. If it quit raining or I heard another turkey I could quicklystash the faketurkeys back in the deer standand strike out to the gobbler. So, I put B-Mobile out with his 2 lady-friends and climbed the ladder up into the stand and sat down. Icut and yelpeda few times with a Talkin' Stick glass over slate pot and heard nothing. I waited a few minutes and let out some whiney yelps and a sharp series of cuts on a Legacy Fatal Attraction diaphram - nothing. I thought to myself, this is absolutely thedumbest thing I've ever done, sitting up in this rediculous deer standlooking at B-Mobile and two hens decoys in a green field. What the he!! are you doing up here?
I closed my eyes for 3-4 minutes and when I opened them there stood a strutter looking at me about 250 yards away at the end of the field. I mean this guy magically appeared like he was transported in from a starship. Holy moly, now what. I slowly got the Mossberg up and when he turned around I let out 3 or 4 soft yelps with the mouthcall. Up periscope. He stood there forever looking, then took two or three steps toward me, then went back into a strut. He would spin around in a circle strutting, run his head up and look forever, then take 2-3 steps toward me. This went on for at least 15-20 minutes and he finally closed the distance to about 100 yards. At that point he stopped strutting and walked to about 55-60 yards. As he went back into a strut I could clearly hear him spitting and drumming. He didn't come straight at B-Mobile like in all the videos they show- instead he kinda gave him a wide bearth and swung around to the side. I figured he had not faired well in a previous encounter with strutting friends and was therefore proceeding with caution. When he finally, and I mean finally, got to what I considered to be a reasonable distance (later measured as 38 steps) the Mossberg sent a Nitro triplex loadof 4X5X7s his way and it was all over. The bird was a heavy two-year old which explained the cautious approach - 22 lbs, 8" beard, 3/4" spur.
So let's review:I broke the decoy rule and the green field rule. We didn't have strutting decoys back in the early 80'swhen I learned to turkey hunt but I suspect thatwould be aegregious code violation too. As for the deer stand, I don't even know what to say about that other than you should try it the next time it rains.
You know what else -I don't care about this code anymore. I had a blast and the excitment of watching this ol' boy slowly meander his way across that green field to B-Mobile was truly exilerating.
You see - old dogs can learn new tricks afterall.
Mouthcaller
B-Mobile is 2-0 and an old dog learns new tricks
About 800 of my best trailcam pics in this link.
