A friend invited me to hunt with her on Lopez Island for the opener. She has property access and a landowner that is tired of feeding the turkeys her chicken food. My friend has gotten one each of the last two years with the shotgun and wanted to turn her hunt up a notch and use her new bow.
I brought my blind and bow as well. Set up before dark on the usual morning path. Only heard one pair of gobbles on the roost. Just before 7 we could see birds bombing off the trees. After a bit, they came down the road and stood from 7 to 13 yards in front of us. Her spot, so she had first dibs. TOO MANY TURKEYS!
They would never clear each other for an ethical shot.... There were about eight big bodied toms and five to seven hens. Finally one stepped out to the side facing us at about 10 yards, thwup, small puff of feathers high and left, miss, a little excited.
Still milling around, another shot, miss, not sure where that went as it was out of my view. The birds moved to our left but did not clear one branch that was missed in the dark setup so I had no shot. The birds moved off.
About ten minutes later a very noisy hen came tentatively back toward the blind calling all the way. We figured we were back in the game when she passed by and headed toward the chicken coops, No such luck, noone followed her.
After a while we headed out to see if we could figure out where they went. We saw some more, maybe same flock, a quarter or so mile away so we circle through another neighbor's to move in on them. We get there and the birds have moved off to the back corner of a, mostly abandoned, farmstead. After sneaking around the bulls, we were able to get within 30 yards but there was a fence between us. The birds started moving away and around another fence so i tried to thread an arrow between the boards for a 30 yard score... sounded like a baseball bat hit that fence! They continued to move off, though not in a big hurry, toward the end of a little ridge in the bull pasture.
We circled again back around to the access road where we had started and positioned around the ridge waiting for them to feed by us. I was up the backside of the ridge and she was on the fencerow in font of them. After about 20 minutes, the first ones appeared in front of me over the ridge. I had a tree at 15 and 22 yards so I figured I would sit still until one went behind one of those trees (I had no cover, just grass). Finall one steps up behind another tree more to the left so I draw and estimate 20 yards and wait. He takes a few steps, pauses, I release and hit the ground on the far side of him, I think I dropped my arm looking for the hit. He was also a few yards farther than I thought away. I nocked another arrow while he and a jake did a little circle dance. The jake went behind the 22 yard tree so I drew back. Not really wanting to take the jake, I decided to rise up on my knees and look over the ridge, there were several less disturbed birds there. I drew a bead on a nice tom just as he turned a bit away from me, zing, thud, down he goes, looked like a spine shot with the arrow sticking out, a few kicks and some wing flaps and all was still. Unfortunately, the other birds went back the way they came instead of past my partner.
Twenty three yards, twenty pounds, 5/8 inch spurs, an eight inch beard with an arrow I fletched... Awesome!
Weathergirl might try to get her first turkey after my friend gets hers.
Hope everyone had a good time out there this weekend.
