Here Turkey, Turkey,Turkey the sneeky bird he is.

Home is the hunter, home from the hill, and yes another day without a kill. Not even a shot.

Well Vic and I went hunting on Tuesday March 31, '09 at his high school buddy's place in Browns Valley, CA which is about 30 minutes east of Marysville up off Highway 20. We arrived at Jerry's at 05:00 hrs and the house was dark. About 05:15 hrs Jerry turned on the front porch lights and at 05:30 he came out to greet us.

We could hear the Gobblers in the distance up in the trees on the hill just east of the house. Jerry said we should get to the blind he had up on the hill before they flew out of their roost trees. It was still dark as we walked the dam he had created to make the pond in his backyard, he's place is 12 acres. The pond is about 50 yard long and and 40 yards wide.
View Larger Map Here's a link to a map of his place.

It wasn't very long after we got into the blind, which was a oblong brush & branches pile enclouser that covered a area about 20x14 feet and the brush was piled up about two and a half feet. He had setup some pieces of plywood as seats up agains the trees that made up part of the blind. Great for a gun hunter but not to good for bow hunters. Hard to shoot a bow sitting on your butt on the ground.

Just as day light broke the gobblers got even more vocal and then they started to sail down out of the trees or actully over the blind over the trees and to the northwest. They looked like B-52 bomber flying overhead. Their wings were locked and they were in a glide path to somewhere away from us. There must have been 30 or more, what a sight to see, it looked like a wing of bombers in one of those black and white war movies. Who knew they could fly that far. I thought they were going to sort of fly down out of the trees to a place somewhere near our blind. Wrong!

So Jerry started calling, yelp, yelp. Then you'd hear a GOBBLE, GOBBLE in the distance over where they must of landed. Cluck, Cluck, ...Gobble Gobble came the answer back.

In nature the hens yelp or cluck and listen for the Gobbler to answer back so they can go to where he is. This is so they can go and mate with the Toms. Yes the Hens go after the Toms. So as hunters we play hen, but we don't go to the Toms. The Toms start to wonder why no hens are showing up to mate with him, so like most males he figures ther is some other Tom who is beating him out of some action, so he goes looking to see where and who it is. Hopefully he sees our hen and Jake (young male) decoys, who he figures is beating him out, if you know what I mean. So he struts in and trys to win the hens over. You almost feel bad shooting them, NOT!

So sound pretty easy, well that the plan. So why no success. Oh well there's always next week, yes were are going back next Tuesday.

Then It's off to Washington to try up at Patty & Willys place in Chattaroy, near Spokane.

Here, Turkey, Turkey.