Re: Bearpaw Season 2010

[NWTFhunter]

Nice story Dale !!  Loved the break in the middle of it too.

[bearpaw]

Its not finished, there's more to come, I had it all typed out last night, went to hit enter, must have hit the wrong key and lost it, will finish again as soon as I have time.

[buckhorn2]

Sounds like a fun hunt those turkeys must really be fun when you can get them to come in with the call. Hope you get the one with the arrow in it before that coyote does.

[bearpaw]

the coyote part of that story is not over

[bearpaw]

Now for the rest of the story....

Frustrated that the coyote was not paying any attention to my hen yelping, I reached in my pocket and pulled out a shock call, never tried it on yotes, but what the hell. I pulled the loud megabox end off the call so wouldn’t be so loud and blew it deee, deee, deee, deee, deee.  I can tell you this, I will try this call again because the coyote picked his head up, looked our way, and came on a loping run straight toward us.

I whispered to Jim, “Don’t move, when he gets close, shoot him in the head.” The coyote paused at the fence, I called again, he crawled under the wire and continued on a run toward us. He went out of sight behind a brush pile, I called again, Jim raised his gun, the coyote came around the brush pile and headed straight toward us again. Kaboom, Jim give him a face full of #6 Heavy Shot, flipped the coyote completely over backwards, the coyote was struggling but trying to get away, Jim hit him again, we went over and looked for him, but couldn’t find him right away and since he was pretty mangy looking anyway, we decided to continue on to the trooper, chatting ecstatically all the way about Jim’s first coyote and the amazing two hours of hunting we had just experienced. There’s no doubt the mangy coyote didn’t make it far and so we chalked it up as one chick and fawn killer eliminated.

We loaded our bird and headed off the hill. We needed to go to town and get more ammo, Jim only had one cartridge left. What’s that all about, you guessed it, I did give him a hard time about that … LOL. Well you won’t guess what happened next, we round the corner at the gate leaving the property and there was another dozen jakes standing there looking stupid. We did have one cartridge left, so Jim got out, loaded his shotty, the birds are still standing there, and, and, and, and they finally trotted away. “they are getting out of range, you better let them go” I said as Jim turned back to the trooper and then admitted he had forgot the safety. We had a few laughs about that on the way to town, we picked up a box of ammo and headed out to another property where I knew a "henned-up tom" was hanging out.

I put Jim in a blind for a few hours sitting quietly in the middle of a preferred feeding area as I knew any calling would cause the hens to run away with the tom following. That’s when I wrote the first part of the story. Anyway, I picked Jim up for lunch, he said the tom was gobbling off and on the whole time but never came within view. We discussed an evening plan and decided we needed to go for a trifecta, so first we went and shot a few ground squirrels and then I put Jim in a blind for an evening hunt where I knew turkeys like to feed before going to roost. Jim only saw hens that evening but we managed to locate a roost just at dark.  We didn't kill #2 turkey that day, but what a great day of hunting that was, we both agreed all the stars must have lined up that day.

Next Day
We were up early as usual and carefully worked our way toward the roost in the darkness, suddenly there was a gobble halfway in so we had to be extra careful. We set up and waited for light, every now and then two birds would gobble, one right below us and one to our left. Finally I called but they didn’t want to answer me. They would gobble on their own but did not want to answer. They came off the roost and one bird even came toward us, but not within visibility. We talked for a couple hours and even though the birds were still in the area, we carefully backed out and went to the west side of the property to try something different. We drove up toward the squirrel patch and suddenly spotted a tom in an opening, but he had already seen the truck and split. We spotted another 8 or 10 jakes and managed to get a shot but missed. The second day was certainly turning out to be a much different story than the prior day.

We finally came in for lunch and discussed a new game plan. I decided to go back to try and call the “henned-up tom” so we went and called for an 1 1/2 hours with no results. Finally it was obvious this was not going to be productive, so we went to check a couple other ranches. The first place we went is not very big, in fact it’s the place with the “arrowed jake”, I called at several locations and we glassed everything and could not locate any birds, so we left for another property. I told Jim we would just drive around for a while on this place until I came up with a better evening hunt plan. Jim has hunted with us for 10 to 15 years and it’s more friends than serious hunting when we are together shooting the bull. As we drove around looking at various wildlife on the ranch we chatted about everything from New Zealand to Obama to Dirty Harry. We must have solved at least half the world’s problems.… LOL.

I think we were talking about famous movie quotes that we liked when we spotted a bird. I stopped the trooper, we jumped out and tried to get a look at what turned out to be several birds. I said “The one on the lefty has a beard”, but I didn’t realize Jim had a bead on a bird on the right that had a red head, and he was afraid to shoot when I was telling him to shoot the bird on the left which from his angle was not clear to shoot… LOL
Finally the birds moved around enough and got together, “they’re all jakes and toms” shoot any one of them” I exclaimed. Jim had told me that all he wanted was a cooker, he had all the birds mounted that he was going to mount, so I knew it didn’t make that much difference to him which one he got. The problem is that now they were all grouped together as they ran away, he didn’t dare pull the trigger. I finally said “they are starting to get out of range” when they split apart and Kaboom, Jim shot, the last jake dropped and started flopping down the hill toward us. If I had quickly turned the trooper I thing the jake would have flopped right into the truck, pretty soon he flopped down the hill and was at our feet. I picked him up and waited for him to finish flopping and then we took photos. The whole hunt wasn’t exactly traditional but we had a great time and Jim filled both his turkey tags, shot his first coyote, and bagged some squirrels, a spring trifecta...LOL.

I love it when a plan comes together. Jim will be back for the late buck hunt, can’t wait to finish talking about famous movie one liners, “Ostalavista Baby”.

[NWTFhunter]

 

[bearpaw]

Here's Jim's second turkey, a coyote we didn't get to shoot at, and a couple squirrels we got.

[bearpaw]

The service berries are blooming, looks like there will be a good crop.