Well this weekend was my maiden voyage on attempting to get a bird with a bow and arrow. I was going out solo for a long weekend and thought I had a reasonable chance. Maybe wishful thinking?
The first morning I got to my parking spot at 3 am and started hiking with no use of flashlight to my destination. After crossing barbed wire, a creek, and and a steep hillside in the dark I settled in and waited for fly down. Not sure if I fell asleep waiting for light but eventually I heard the birds fly down. In general it was a pretty quiet event. Not many gobbles but a lot of hens yelping around. Eventually all the birds made their way into a field while I was waiting in the tree line. So much for calling in an active gobbler. Since I thought I knew where they were headed I gave up on trying to call in something and decided I was going to have to settle for an ambush. After 2 hours the birds came my direction and I thought they were within my shooting range. I made my move. I leaned out from behind a tree and let an arrow fly. My arrow immediately glanced off a small twig which resulted in an obvious missed shot and now the birds had their heads up and looking around. I cued up a second arrow and again, pinged another twig between me and the birds. At this point the birds wandered off and I was left to my own thoughts. Conclusion: Don't try to shoot through though any type of brush because you're arrow is bound to find a target other than the bird! You seasoned archery guys are probably laughing at this. I'm a NEWBIE. Hey, with little effort I found my 2 arrows which I thought alone was a minor miricle.
Day 2: I Decided to go hunt a private piece of property that I had not hunted before. Again, at 3:30 am I am out trying to navigate a creek and hillside. After waiting for daylight I sat another 3 hours and only saw one lone bird run as fast as possible from my decoy
. I couldn't take sitting any longer just listening to woodpeckers and grouse so after giving up I got up and went on a long hike around the perimeter of the property and found very little turkey sign which was a surprise. Not sure of what lesson was learned except that by now I was really starting to learn that a good set-up for archery was going to be different than what I was used to with a 12 g.
After driving to all my usual spots that held birds in the past I decided to call it good. I'm going to keep working on my archery technique so that I might be able to increase my odds of being able to get a bird with a longer shot. I think it may also be time to do some more scouting for additional areas to hunt after finding a general absence of birds in places that they used to be in the past.
Good luck everyone.
