Went out with another member. Tried to use our bows. Gobbling and yelping all over the place, loudest hens we've ever heard. They would stay just out of bow range. Opening day we had gobblers within shotgun range more than once. I broke down and pulled the muzzleloader out the second day and missed a nice tom at about thirty yards. Frustrated, I pulled the Benelli out the third morning. We got near their roost and set up on opposite sides. Of course, they went to the guy with the bow... and stayed just out of his range. I got to watch the tom mate with two hens from about 145 yards away across the ravine while my buddy stalked them. He got within 40 yards but then they headed away up the hill. That afternoon, we got into a group of jakes so I took my frustration out on one of them since he was stupid enough to still come to me after seeing me at 75 yards. Picked up the bow for the rest of the weekend, the turkeys didn't come back to our ambush where they had roosted the two previous nights. Sunday morning we went to our other birds, of course we ended up in the middle of three roosted toms, with our truck! Gobble, gobble, take off across the hills.... At one point I could see a fan over a little hill at about 25 yards then another bird started raising a ruckus nearby and they moved off. We followed, they hit a dead end bench so I set up in ambush, turns out they were on the other side of the slash pile and suddenly decided to fly away....
So, heading back to the truck, we come around a corner and there are three birds cutting into the bushes, I back track hoping the one we didn't get a good look at might be a gobbler, or there might be one we didn't see. Full draw, they step out at 15 yards, hen, hen, and yes, hen. So ended opening weekend. Had a blast. Unfortunately the 1000+ mile round trip will probably keep me from them the rest of the season.
