Friday the 13th bird.
This was some of the worst conditions I have ever hunted turkeys in!!! Last Saturday we had a 0 degree windchill and this Thursday it was 101 with 60 to 70 mph winds. Nothing would respond to calls and not a single gobble was heard this whole trip. It would be more like deer hunting where I would just find a comfy spot and sit all day. While hunting in the draw to keep out of the winds I had a group of hens, jakes and 1 tom that just happened to wander by. They stayed about 65 yards away until the wind broke a tree limb off that fell down right beside the birds. They all spooked my way and would eventually start cruising by at about 30. When the Tom stopped......BOOM and he flies off! After inspection there were thin branches between him and I that I didn't notice when concentrating on the shot. Lesson Learned!! I was pretty disappointed after sitting from about 6 am till 6 pm. Our curfew is 7 pm on this public land so I decided to start out of the draw and head to the truck.
Once I got out of the draw there was smoke everywhere I looked. I had thought it was just getting cloudy while I was in the draw. There were fires north of me, West of me and South of me. Which as you can imagine is not a good combination when you throw in no 3/10 " rain in the last 6 months plus the high winds!! I got to a high vantage point to take these pictures. At least 1 of the fires is still burning and at last I heard had traveled 80+ miles and burned over 366000 acres. 4 turkey hunters got trapped. The found 3 of them alive but the other was not found till the next morning. Luckily he found a stock tank to jump in and kept splashing water on himself as the fire passed. He only ended up with 10% of his body with 2nd and 3rd degree burns. 1 firefighter had smoke inhalation and ended up having a heart attack and passed while being mediflighted and a road grater operator that was trying to create a fire brake was overcome by the fire and burned in his equipment. These winds have just now died down from the 60 and 70 mph down to around 20 to 30 which should help a little. Several cities ended up being evacuated. If yall would like to read a little about it just look up Western Oklahoma fires and there is plenty.
Friday I sat in the same draw with the same crappy conditions. I waited to make sure the fires weren't starting back up that were still smoldering around the area and instead of sitting all day I sat till 9 am then did a fire check. At noon it seemed all was good by me so I settled in for the evening. Again no turkeys talking anywhere makes it hard to sit still and around 5 pm a cold front pushed in and the temps dropped to a windchill of around 40. Since I was dressed for the 90's this created a bit of challenge lol. At 6 pm I had all I could stand. I decided to move a little further in to see if I could find a better spot for the morning.
Walking slowly while keeping my eye out I came out of the draw to the opposite side of where I had parked and there was a group of trees. While looking to the trees there was a steepish slope directly after them that led to another draw. As I passed them "crap" there is a bird looking right at me 40 yards away lol. I crouched down and took a few steps back to put a cedar tree between us and sat down against 2 saplings. Hit the box call a few times and gave a few yelps with the mouth call and nothing. (wasn't sure if it was a hen or gobbler) Waited about 15 min and stood back up to take a peek. Made a few steps and there he was. The top of the fan was just above the hill. I dropped back down and gave a few angry clucks with yelps following with the mouth call and a few min later started hearing the leaves crunching. Here came his hens. 3 hens came out from behind the cedar at 15 yards and was scratching the ground. Through cedar I could see the Tom strutting but he would not step out for nothing. Then the hens could tell something wasn't quite right and they all went on attention. After a few tense moments they put there heads back down but started walking away at a pretty good pace with the Tom in tow! I gave several clucks but every time he stopped there were branches blocking his head. He now was in full strut while trying to keep up with his ladies. I gave some hard clucks and putts finally he stopped about 30 yards away. dropped his have just enough and stuck his head up and BOOOM!! This time I made it count. I couldn't believe how lucky I was to not have them spook off when I first seen them and was very blessed to have been able to make the shot count.......after a hard lesson.