Awesome Late season TX Rio Hunt
05-12-2006, 12:00 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2006
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Posts: 12
Awesome Late season TX Rio Hunt
I would have never thought in a million years that you could get the kind of hunt I got right at the end of the season on ranches that have had quite a few hunters on them already and a lot of turkeys already killed off of them and in the minuscule amount of time I had to hunt (1 1/2 days, 2 evenings and one morning). Got to the first ranch in Baylor county just north of the town of Throckmorton around 10am Monday and the outfitter we represent gave us a very nice tour of the ranch and their whitetail hunting areas and shooting houses, blinds, food plots, etc, etc. Hotter than the blazes. At around 4pm it was still 96 but I suited up and went out. By 5:30pm I had a gobbler called into gun range but I think he might have seen me trying to make a small aiming adjustment because he took off putting. called in 3 hens after that but nothing else that evening. Next morning you wouldn't have believed there were hardly any turkeys left on that ranch it went so dead. I did hear 2 far off gobbles and seen 3 hens in a food plot and called in 3 more hens but that was it. We had to leave that afternoon to be at another one of the outfitters we represent's ranch about 20 miles back towards Throckmorton for an afternoon/evening hunt that day and a morning hunt the next day if needed. We went out to the first place and bumped about 10 gobblers trying to get to the place he was wanting to go to. We still worked that place for an hr without nothing so we slipped across the HWY to another of his places and was walking a road when the beautiful thunder started rolling in. With the first long roll of thunder we heard a reasonably close gobble and took off after it. When we got what we thought was fairly close to the gobble we set up. He started working this box call like I have never heard one worked before and the turkey (we found out turkeys) were talking. They were on the other side of a dam of a mostly dried up pond. I thought they were actually on top ofthe dam strutting back and forth behind a big tree on the dam where we couldn't see them because they would get louder and then sound farther away and back and forth like they do when they're strutting back and forth. The guide knew better. He told me get your stuff we are moving in on these birds. We took off across a fairly open area and while I was thinking this is a bad move, but the guide knew what he was doing. We got all the way to the very base of the dam and he belly crawled to the top of it and peeked over and when he got back down to me he said there were 6 right on the other side of it from us. Fortunately there was a really decent size Mesquite tree right at the base of our side of the dam so we set up right at the base of it and he began to perform his magic. (I have turkey hunted for years and I am not to shabby at it at all if I say so myself but it is a work of art to see a professional work) The move we made right into their living room sent those birds into orbit and it wasnt but minutes before they were headed our way. He even told me where they would come from. I aimed right at the right side of the dam where he told me to where there was a break in ithe dam and that's exactly where they came. 3 in the first group and 3 in the second group and everyone of them was trying to out gobble the other. After all 6 gobblers were in front of us another putting on a show I will never forget another gobbler showed up we couldn't see still behind the dam and started double and triple gobbling which made the 6 in front of us go even more berserk. I had 4 really nice Rio's in easy gun range including the biggest of the 6. Only one of the birds was doing any strutting and he was unquestionably the dominant Tom even though he was by far not the biggest, but man did he put on a show. I decided to shoot him just because he was an absolutely beautiful Tom with the most beautiful colors in his fan I have ever seen and was the dominant bird. I shot him at 32 steps with my Remington 12 gauge "Super Mag" 3 1/2" Magnum and really flopped him hard backwards, he never even twitched. I could have easily filled the rest of my 3 tags as the remaining 5 gobblers just stood there wondering what had just happened, but I only wanted the one so I let them go about their business maybe to excite another hunter as much as they did me some day. My Rio is in the freezer waiting to go to a Taxidermist. He is a nice solid 3 year old bird, I'm not sure of the weight as we didn't get to weigh him but I am guessing around 18-20. He has a 9" beard and 1 1/16" very sharp spurs on both sides and both spurs have some hook to them. [/align][/align]Just me and me with one of our outfitters that we represent in TX.
Spurs/both were hooked and 1 1/16"
The beard 9"
Here's a little guy I caught. Not very big, about 30" had 7 buttons. I wanted a bigger one but this is the only one I seen.
Spurs/both were hooked and 1 1/16"
The beard 9"
Here's a little guy I caught. Not very big, about 30" had 7 buttons. I wanted a bigger one but this is the only one I seen.
