No last minute luck for me.

Yesterday had to have been one of the most miserabely frustrating days I've had in the woods. Ever.

It all started off by getting into the woods way too late.

We pulled into the landowner's driveway sometime around 6:30 and happened to watch as several toms and their harem of hens flew the roost and into a field. Damn!

So we circle the field and get set up, only to have a coyote run through and spook the birds back into the trees. Double damn!

No problem, we'll call, wait them out, and eventually they'll fly back down. We call, four toms gobble. We call. Five toms gobble. We call. We can't count them all. The garbage truck drives up the road. Three toms gobble.

Suh-weet, right?

Huh... My leg itches. I look down to find I'm leaned up against a tree that about a billion ants have made their home. Now, it doesn't register at first that my legs itch because they're on the inside of my pants as well as the outside. So what do I do? Brush the ones on the outside off and spend the next several minutes wondering why my legs still itch...

Long story short, had you been walking through my set up yesterday morning you would have seen a half naked young man trying to brushabout ahundred or so ants off of his legs.

No big deal, the turkeys are still gobbling. But whats that? Putt. Putt. Putt-putt. Damn! The hen is trying to get the flock back together, and she succeeds! So we try and piss the hen off, get her agitated enough to come into our set. She gets pissed alright, but takes the toms in the oppsite direction.

By now it's 11:00 or so and it has to be hotter than the back seat of the cab to hell. I mean it was mis-er-abley hot. Hottest day of the year so far, 93 degrees on the ride home.

We didn't hear another gobble all day, and by 5:00 we packed it up and headed home, leaving the ants, but more importantly the turkeys, to live another year.

Edit* I forgot to mention that I had taken my thermacell with me fishing last Sunday, only to leave it in my tackle box yesterday morning. I wound up getting bit multiple times, including twice behind my right ear and once directly below my right eye. It looks like I went a round in a boxing ring instead of turkey hunting!