SO my 24 hour roller coaster is over. Cody really wanted to turkey hunt and the snow was hindering my buddy getting over to goldendale from yakima so we decided last night at 7 o'clock to go to the blues. Cody and i had the car packed up by 8 and we were on the road. midnight into walla walla at the super 8. 4.5 hours of sleep and on the road to the turkey hunting grounds that i have driven by a few times but never hunted.
We parked the car at the end of a gravel road and sat while my buddy continued on down the road to look for some birds, as it got light i realized we parked under 2 trees with 5 turkeys in them, dam, dam... I could see beards on 2 birds and we decided to wait for the bigger one to drop out of the tree to work him. We called and messed around with him for 10 minutes after he dropped out fo the tree but could never get him to come in (my first time turkey hunting with my son's first time) no deke didn't help our cause any. SO we watched him from a distance go away so we started walking the other way calling the whole way, 50 yards away from where we set up i hear something behind me and it is that dam bird chasing us, hew as gobbling and making some other noise i am not familiar with. He got to 20 yards and i told cody to get ready cause that bird is about to realize we are not a hen, well cody lifted the 16 gauge and let her fly and i saw grass fly and the bird to, right up in the tree above us. Cody took another shot and missed again. I told him he needs to calm his nerves, we watched that tom for 30 minutes strutting his stuff and couldn't get him back. Rookies.
Found some other birds but they were on private property and couldn't find a door to knock on to ask permission so those birds lived.
At about 0900 we drove aways to another section of land and found some more birds but this time we found a house. The first one the guy was really nice but refused to let us hunt the birds that were on his neighbors property (we didn't know they were not on his property) but we asked. He pointed us to his neighbor and said they allow fishing so they might allow hunting. We hit her door step and she was very nice and she said cody could try and take a turkey. There were 4 toms a couple jakes and 10-15 hens all running together.
We worked those birds untill 1200, we had a point in there where they holed up at 35 yards in a thicket and gobbled at us for 45 minutes, i think if i had a decoy we could have got one of them to commit. Cody took 3 different shots at those birds but today was not his day. He finished the day with a smile and had a blast and now realizes that you are not going to win every day. If you did there would be no more game. He is sad because he didn't kill his first turkey but he played like a champ and didn't complain untill the end. He could have shot a bird at roost but i explained to him although it is legal it is not fair. We hunted turkey today and i learned alot. Still need to have him shoot alot more than we already do. Need to work on getting his nerves to calm while in the moment.
Here is to a 4.5 hour drive home without a bird but great memories with my 10 year old son. He wants to do it again in 2 weeks. Looks like i will break out the 12 gauge for him as he said he didn't even notice the kick.
