2022 Turkeys! Share your harvest.

[ridgefire]

My son got one on Saturday. It came on a string to the decoys. 

[tvandy45]

On the board for 2022!

[Wetwoodshunter]

Brushcrawler and I had a banner day on Saturday. Second one on the left has a double beard, I think we had over 45" of beards between the 4 birds.

Rotate  pics if you can.

[Wetwoodshunter]

More pics

[lewy]

Holy crap fellas great start! Close the season the quota has been met 

[Pathfinder101]

Little Pathfinder's biggest bird yet.  11" beard.  Haven't been able to get out since 3rd day of Youth Season to fill my tag or his second.  Too much baseball...

[Pathfinder101]

Nasty spurs...

[Sutherland]

Great birds everyone! Congratulations, thanks for sharing!

[bearclaw_guajolote]

Opening weekend Saturday morning we woke up to a dusting of snow in West Okanogan county and were hoping it would keep the birds at roost a little longer so we could get a better position and set a few dekes. It was so bright with the moon reflecting off the snow and it seemed to make the birds come out of roost earlier than Friday morning, so by the time we got to the spot they were already on the ground, and not nearly as talkative as Friday. Decided to hike the ridge and call every so often and got a gobbler to bite. Dad and I posted up up off the ridge edge and I ditched my pack. Dad kept calling, alternating the reed and gobble to keep his interest, as I snuck downhill on my hands and skidding on my butt. Finally got to what I decided was my "spot" and just caught a glimpse of his beard and head in the underbrush about 30 yards out and downhill. Decided that once he cleared the lip he'd be in range of my ol' 870 Wingmaster 2 3/4 fixed full choke. Soon as he hopped up I let him have it! First mature Tom for me, and so happy to have my dad call him in.

Did some midday chores and took a nap, then decided to go looking for an evening bird at a different spot for Dad. Narrow strip of public land that we had some intel on from a friend who owns a cabin across the road. We showed up around 3 and got out to look...didn't even grab the guns  . Got to the edge of the public land and let out a few yelps to an immediate response from a gobbler. I told dad to keep him talking and jetted back to the truck to grab guns and shells. Made it back to dad sweating like a pig and out of breath. Dad hid out in a brush patch just at the edge of the clearing and I took a vantage point higher up the hill. From there it played out like an episode of a hunting show. Over the next ten minutes, that tom responded to every call and came in on a string, gobbling and flashing his fan all over the place. The combo of Dad's yelps and my slate calls brought him right into range and Dad smoked him. Awesome way to start the season! Time to start trying out some of my new recipes!

[tgomez]

Great pictures and stories everyone, thanks for sharing. Keep em coming we have 36 days to go in the Spring season.

[Mfowl]

Little Pathfinder's biggest bird yet.  11" beard.  Haven't been able to get out since 3rd day of Youth Season to fill my tag or his second.  Too much baseball...

  Rio's are my fav! Congrats!

Congrats all!

[ljsommer]

I went out last Thursday the 21st through Sunday the 24th over in GMU 121 south of Colville. The first couple of days we hunted some public land and camped in a tent on the ground and my goodness it was cold at night. We woke up to frost on everything each morning. At night we heard coyotes, cranky whitetail deer snorting, and one wolf. In the morning we were greeted by a symphony of turkey gobbles in the surrounding trees.
After a couple of close calls with some quiet jakes, we decided to head over to my buddies house nearby and hunt his property. Day one of that involved a couple of close calls for me, including a miss (fired from too far away) on a big tom, and then a comical attempt by myself to run down a tom, shotgun in hand with the safety engaged. I snuck as close as I could but once I saw the turkey realizing my presence, I went full speed sprint but he won the race.
Later that afternoon I was able to spot a couple of jakes slowly approaching through a narrow draw, and I snuck around behind them and put a very slow, very cautious stalk on them, only moving through the brush when they were heads-down feeding. I got close enough to make an ethical shot and fired, successfully securing my first turkey.

After that we celebrated by going for a quick spin in the woods on some quads, and drove around in camo just being hooligans.
The remainder of that evening and the next morning we worked on securing my fiance a bird. We started off on my buddies property and then got a call from a neighbor about some birds on his 160 acres of beautiful woodland property. We drove over pronto and snuck into a barn near a field but had no sightings, aside from a rare albino turkey which was a real treat.

The next, and last morning, we spent the morning with some near misses on some beautiful birds including a scenario where an enormous tom came into my decoys (one hen and one jake) and attacked my jake decoy but we weren't able to capitalize.
I am pretty thrilled to have found success after years of attempts and will be going back in a few weeks to try to fill my other tag.
Big thank you to some forums members here who have offered input, suggestions, and in particular forums user Machias who once drove all the way over from Idaho to help call for me. We weren't successful but it was a pleasure spending time with him.

[Threewolves]

Got out to hunt today for the first time this season, lasted about  25 minutes, two others were with him.

Sent from my SM-A426U using Tapatalk

[Pathfinder101]

Got out to hunt today for the first time this season, lasted about  25 minutes, two others were with him.

Sent from my SM-A426U using Tapatalk

 :yeah:I had a girlfriend like this once...

[washingtonmuley]

Double!!