4-15-2011

4-15-2011 Fri
6:00AM- 9:00AM

Weather: E 17 G 22 mostly cloudy, 37 degrees


Location: La Crosse Experimental Forest (turkey hunting)

Caught: No turkeys

Partners: None

Comments

This morning the conditions were not ideal for turkeys, in fact it was dam hard getting up to go. But, I have trouble getting up every morning no matter what I may be doing. From past experiences I knew the turkeys were not overly affected by strong winds. It is probably best to find some fairly sheltered valley, but it is not necessary.
Right away this morning I had two gobblers just a spouting off giving away their location. Today,my strategy was to try to and get much closer to them before I began my hen act. When doing this you do risk the possibility of spooking them or if the are with hens you may spook the hens and toms will run off with the hens.
I got within about one hundred yards of the toms, set up and began my act. The toms were roosted on the windy ridge and I was not quite sure they could hear me. But after about ten minutes of calling they began to come closer. Unfortunately I set up on a rather open pine plantation, but instead of sitting in the fairly open pines I was in some pretty think brush about ten yards from the more open woods. The toms came, but they were hung up at a distance of what I thought to be forty yards. They soon lost interest and no amount of calling I was doing was going to bring them back. The rear tom stopped with only his head visible at what I thought was a distance of forty-five to fifty yards. I thought now or never and if I hit him I will get it and if I don't all that is visible is his head and he will probably be unscratched. I put my scoped gun up and peered through the lens and thought I must still have the scope set to 1X because he looked awfully far off. I did shoot and completely missed. When I stood up and went to the spot where the bird was standing I could see the distance was much more like sixty to sixty-five yards. Now I knew why the birds head had looked so small.