Post by: stickbuck on April 17, 2012, 07:53:03 PM
We arrived in camp at around 12:45AM on Saturday morning. With the excitement of the upcoming opener on Sunday, we just couldn't find a way to go to bed. After a few drinks, maybe more, we finally hit the sack around 2:30AM. At about 5:15AM, we awoke to the orchestra of multiple toms and hens on the roost not too far from camp. By 5:45AM, six toms had made their way down to the field near camp. For the next few hours we sat and watched as these toms strutted with twenty hens and a dozen jakes. At around 9:00AM, the turkeys finally headed over to the neighboring property. We couldn't believe the amount of turkeys we had already seen. It was so hard to watch all these turkeys and still have to wait a whole day before the opener. We hung around camp all day and then at about 1:00PM, a dozen jakes made their way back into the field. At about 3:00PM, all the toms, hens, and jakes were back again. The strutting, gobbling, and fighting amongst the toms went on until about 7:00PM when all the turkeys started their way back up the hill towards the roost. It was great knowing that all these turkeys were roosting only a few hundred yards from where our blinds were set up. We were absolutely going crazy that night listening to all the toms gobble on the roost. We just couldn't find a way to sleep but made sure we had enough drinks to make us go to bed dreaming about the big toms that we might have in our sights the next day.
Day 1: Opening Day
So the alarm went off about 4:25AM on opening morning. After some coffee and some oatmeal it was time to head to the turkey woods. We grabbed our bows and or video cameras and headed to the blind. We got all settled in to the blind at about 5:30AM after putting our decoys out. The first blind that we sat in would catch the birds coming down a skid road towards the field. The skid road that we chose to put the blind on was the skid road we saw the turkeys come down on the previous morning. But wouldn't you know, the first two turkeys to show up came down the other road and didn't present us an immediate shot. As I looked out the window of the blind to my left, I saw two big toms strutting five yards from the blind. Being left-handed, this was going to be a really difficult shot. As I spun to get into shooting position, we just couldn't get the right camera angle to catch it all on tape so I forced myself to pass on the shot. The hard part about passing was the fact that one had a 9-inch beard and the other one about a 10-inch beard. After a few minutes they fed back behind the blind and down towards another skid road towards a neighboring property. About fifteen minutes later, we heard two shots and feared that those two big old toms had gotten killed. We stayed in the blind and listened as all the birds came off the roost and headed south towards a neighboring property that was out of our line of vision. At about 8:30AM, we decided to leave the blind and go have breakfast after we heard a third shot from the neighboring property. As we made it back to our car, we decided to go check on that shooting that we heard down the road. As we made it down the road, we found that two hunters had killed the two toms that had come by our blind earlier that morning. They had also killed a 10-inch bearded tom with the third shot that had come from the opposite direction. After a few high-fives, we hit the road to go have breakfast. After breakfast, we decided that we should move our blinds around for the afternoon hunt based on what the turkeys did the previous afternoon. We got back into the blind at about 9:30AM. With no sight of any turkeys, we decided to pull out of the blind at around noon and go have some lunch. We made it to the blind at around 1:00PM and decided that we would stick it out until the turkeys went up to the roost. At around 2:30PM, we could hear the toms gobbling over on the neighboring property. It wasn't fifteen minutes later that we could see some turkeys coming down the trail towards our blind and our decoys. Of course, the first turkey coming down the trail was a nice tom. As he walked into my shooting lane, he was only about fifteen yards away. I drew my bow and settled my top pin on him and waited to get the okay from my buddy running the camera. As soon as I got the okay, I released and watched my arrow fly true and hammer him. He took off running for about fifty yards and laid down. My buddy and I quickly scrambled to change seats knowing that the rest of the turkeys were coming. We knew my shot hadn't spooked the rest of the flock, so we were pretty optimistic that there were more birds coming. A dozen jakes made their way down the trail past our blind, but my buddy chose to pass on the immature birds. It was pretty funny to watch the jakes head over to where my turkey was laying and proceeded to peck at him. He puffed up his feathers and the jakes took off running. After it sounded like most of the birds were going to feed off to a different direction and not come down our trail, I decided to sneak over and put a second arrow in my bird. We reviewed the footage and saw that it was a lethal hit, but felt the 2nd shot was necessary. I snuck up to about fifteen yards and put a second shot right through him that immediately killed him. After shooting him the second time, I walked up to him and noticed that he had a big old 9-inch beard and three-quarter inch spurs. I was ecstatic, I couldn't believe that I had just shot my first turkey with a bow and we got it all on video. I headed back to the blind and we sat until about 7:00PM. We realized that the turkeys had all headed up towards the roost and that it was probably time to make our exit. We made our way back to where my turkey was and proceeded to take all the pictures. It wasn't what we were expecting but we were satisfied with one nice bird down on the first day.
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Day 2: Monday
Once again the alarm clock went off at about 4:25AM. We made our coffee and oatmeal and headed off to the blind shortly after 5:00AM. It was nice to hear that after all the shooting the previous day from the neighboring property, all the turkeys were still roosting in the same spot. As daylight approached, we could hear turkeys coming down the skid road they had taken on opening day. Due to the fact that this was our last day to hunt, my buddy chose to take a shot at one of the jakes that strolled into bow range at fifteen yards. Once I had it on camera, I gave him the okay and he drilled his first turkey of the season. It didn't knock him down right away, but you could tell he was hurt and he ran off and died about fifty yards away. We went and retrieved that bird after we could tell the neighboring property was holding all of the birds. We decided that after tagging his bird, we would go back to the car and grab a snack. After my buddy and I put our bows back in camp, we decided to grab our shotguns and head up the hill and try to decoy in a nice bird. We started walking up the hill and instantly heard a gobble on the neighboring property that sounded only a few hundred yards away. We let out a few yelps and could see a tom strutting with two jakes and a half dozen hens. My buddy let out a few more yelps, and the tom was leaving the hens and coming straight to us. We didn't even have enough time to put any decoys out, it was all we could do to lay down in the brush as the tom came up the hill towards our location. As he came into view, he was only about twenty-five yards away. My buddy raised Remington 870 and fired knocking down the big tom. We ran up and grabbed him as he was flopping around and couldn't believe that he had just killed a big old tom with a 9 1/2 inch beard. We grabbed his bird and walked back down to camp right as the rain started to fall. It wasn't even 8:00AM so we decided to head to town for breakfast. Upon returning to camp, we saw a dozen jakes feeding in the field close to our blind. We waited until they fed back into the timber and decided to make our way down towards the blind. We got about halfway to the blind and my buddy looked up the hill and saw a big old tom standing up on the knob above our blind. He was about 150 yards away and just standing there. We hunkered down along the edge of the road and watched as he started to come down towards skid road that would lead him right to our location. We couldn't believe it, we were stuck on the side of the road without a chance of getting in the blind. As my buddy watched the tom coming down the hill, I caught movement off to my left. I watched as fifteen or twenty turkeys started coming down the skid road. I couldn't believe my eyes after I saw a big old beard hanging down on one of the toms in the group. I slowly raised my gun and as he cleared the brush, I took the safety off and I fired the first shot in the hunting woods from my brand-new Remington 11-87. At the shot, birds scattered all over the place and I watched as my big old tom was flopping on the ground. We ran over to my bird and we could not believe what I had done. As I reached down to look at his beard, I was in complete shock to see that the beard was going to stretch 10 ½ inches if not 11 inches as long as my minds eye wasn't fooling me. After a bunch of jumping around in high-fives, we grabbed my bird and took a bunch of pictures. After all the pictures, we grabbed my bird and headed back to camp. It was pretty crazy to think that by 9:15AM, we had killed three birds that morning resulting in both of us being tagged out for the trip. After a few phone calls to friends and family, it was time to pack up camp and hit the road back to the west side. It was a good thing that we had been so successful because a huge rainstorm was now rolling in the area. On the way home, we decided to stop at Hooked On Toys in Wenatchee to get our birds more accurately weighed. We were quite shocked to see that that big tom didn't weigh in the mid-20s like we had originally thought. With all the blood that was pooled up in the bottom of the bag, we knew he had lost a decent amount of weight and that we should of got him weighed minutes later after killing him. He still weighed over twenty-two pounds, but I think we lost some weight with all that blood that was pooled up in the bag. All in all, it was an amazing trip and great memories were made. Even at twenty-two pounds, it still puts my tom as the number 12 all-time turkey in the NWTF record books for a typical Merriam’s taken with a shotgun in Washington State. The other big tom with the 9-inch bearded that I shot with my bow weighed in at almost twenty pounds, which will definitely put him high on the typical record books that NWTF has for archery in Washington State. It's going to take a while to get all the video put together, but I'm sure everyone will enjoy all the footage that we were able to capture on tape. I only have about five and a half hours of video footage to edit. My apologies to Yelp for getting your hopes after I told 21-20 that the big tom was pushing 26 pounds. Maybe I can make that happen during this fall’s hunt!!
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Post by: bearpaw on April 17, 2012, 07:59:33 PM
Post by: cem3434 on April 17, 2012, 08:01:51 PM
Post by: carpsniperg2 on April 17, 2012, 08:09:04 PM
Post by: Gobble Doc on April 17, 2012, 08:44:27 PM
Post by: Wanttohuntmore on April 17, 2012, 08:55:44 PM
Post by: turkey buster on April 17, 2012, 08:57:11 PM
Post by: HornHoarder on April 17, 2012, 09:06:56 PM
Post by: h2ofowlr on April 17, 2012, 09:50:01 PM
Post by: Bigluke1981 on April 17, 2012, 11:39:17 PM
Post by: BullMagnet76 on April 17, 2012, 11:46:34 PM
Post by: Turkeyman on April 18, 2012, 03:56:51 AM
Post by: turkey choke on April 18, 2012, 03:58:50 AM
Post by: BOWHUNTER45 on April 18, 2012, 06:53:20 AM
Post by: kevinlisa06 on April 18, 2012, 09:03:22 PM
Post by: 101521 on April 19, 2012, 07:11:36 AM
Post by: yelp on April 20, 2012, 09:50:41 AM
Nice job..two nice toms. What was you final score on the big dude? Congrats! :)
Post by: stickbuck on April 20, 2012, 12:17:10 PM
Post by: yelp on April 20, 2012, 01:05:32 PM
Post by: stickbuck on April 20, 2012, 01:49:15 PM
Post by: PrimeTimeShooter on April 21, 2012, 12:37:51 AM
Post by: turkeydancer on April 22, 2012, 08:20:06 AM
(will post my 4 minute hunt after catching up with all the posts since I left ... you would be #13 if I sent mine in).