We wimped out. If you really want to know, we stopped turkey hunting over a week ago. We were down at camp. We were going out, but our hearts just were not in it. Moose went to work on the food plots. I ran to Maysville on errands. Angus left for a visit with his sweetheart in Minneapolis. What caused our camp to give up?
Weather
I’d say that was the underlying cause. I think we got utterly spoiled by regular HIs in the 70s and 80s. We had beautiful weather through a lot of March and early April. Then turkey season started and the bottom dropped out. I had mentioned our previous poor luck in ENSO-Neutral conditions earlier in the year:
If there was an ENSO-Neutral jinx, we blew it. Angus and I both got birds. I’ve done some more digging on this. It wasn’t as bad as I thought.
For two of those ENSO-Neutral years, we had a problem with poaching. The neighbors were encroaching on our property and shooting anything that moved. Eventually, the property fell into the hands of saner hands. The neighbors were evicted, and the game came back after another year or so. There were rumors that one of the teenage boys was out chasing birds with a .22 and just letting them lie. That all ended about 12 years ago.
Another year was COVID. I was out with my recording gear getting content for a podcast. The Girlfriend called me to tell me that Andy Bashear, the Governor, had blocked sales of non-resident licenses. Non-residents were to stay out. I was suddenly on the wrong side of the bridge. Everyone who hunts at our camp is a non-resident, so Turkey Camp just didn’t happen that year.
The weather definitely was a factor. We seldom have seasons where there is such a dearth of gobbling. It grinds at the hunter’s soul to drag your bones out to the blind, day after day, and meet with silence.
My Struggle
Looking back on it, it was my own stupid fault. I’ve been going out to the Honey Hole every year for 20 years, putting my butt down next to a big tree and calling birds. I looked at the bushes around me and thought they might need a little trimming, but it could wait. By the end of the first week, I was repenting that bit of procrastination. Two honest shooting opportunities, two flat misses. I thought I could thread the needle through that ground cover and twice the wad hit something and went into orbit. It’s not like I’ve never missed. In fact, one of my first encounters with a gob at the Honey Hole ended in my Flite-Control wad nicking a bit of old fence and spraying the young oak leaves. However, two in one season. That was a bit much. What’s more, the second miss was an Ol Boss Gobbbler that sounded like he might have been one of the Sons of Moto. He hopped down from a roost down by the campground and came 400 yards just to be serenaded by me. That was a low spot for sure.
Here’s a pic of Honey Hole showing what I as shooting through.
Then there was the Jake. I never swore off Jakes completely, but I stopped seeking them actively. I think it’s been 18 years since I meant to take a Jake. It just kind of wastes a tag that could have been burned on a 2-year-old. Then this season happens. I’m sitting there cussing myself out for missing that big gob, and three jakes step into a wide opening in the brush. The lead Jake pulls out a little ahead and sticks out his neck. I’d like to try to make an honorable excuse, but a turkey hunter can only take so much. Besides, I had to see if there was something wrong with the gun.
The Plots, The Winter, etc.
I came into this season with all sorts of worries. There was the ENSO-Neutral thing, but we’d also just had the hardest winter in a decade or two. We had cold in December, and then January was a complete deep freeze. We’d just had a big Cicada hatch, and the turkeys had gone into deer season with a big cohort of Jakes and Jennies. We had planted food plots in late Summer, and they’d not done well due to drought. Bottom line: I didn’t know how badly the turkeys had fared over the winter.
The results are mixed. That Jake I blasted went 19 lbs. That’s the heaviest Jake I’ve ever seen taken at our camp. That’s in the plus column. On the other hand, I spied a little 2/3 scale Jenny– the smallest spring turkey I have ever seen– running around with her mother near the end of April.
The plots ended up not being so bad after all. A lot of the seed didn’t expess itself last fall, but hid under the snow and came up this spring. There are a couple of plots where the clover came up in profusion. I’m not going to spend time on the plots right now. I’ll have more on them soon.
Coming out of winter, I was eagerly listening for any sign that the turkeys had survived. Morning flydown activity was mostly awesome in February and March. I had a couple of podcasts’ worth of material. April came, and there was mostly a weird silence. The flock that normally sits 80 east of the Honey Hole clammed up, moved off, and I still don’t know where they went.
My guess is that the new food plots kind of rearranged the seating. Turkeys that had been roosting for decades around the place in the same spot got a big new buffet and a new menu. It’s odd because I generally did not see many turkeys in the food plots this spring. They mostly stayed back in the forest cover.
The Gear
Normally, I go through and detail the stuff that worked and the stuff that didn’t. We really did not try out that many new.
I mentioned pushpin calls earlier in the year. I want to call this out again. In the past, I’ve always used my pushpin as a kind of backup.
It just so happened that Angus and I both got our birds using our pushpins. My posting earlier in the year got us talking. He’d never used one. I bought him one for his birthday, and he scored on the first hunt with it. Me? I just happened to be using mine this year every time a gobbler responded, including the boss gob I missed. It was kind of a mediocre year, and it was usually cold and damp, and my better box calls and pot calls weren’t sounding their best. For whatever reason, we had our best luck with our Quaker Boy Easy Yelpers
While we’re on the subject of calls, I should also point out that I stumbled on a deal on mouth calls from Hunter Specialty.
As of this writing, they’re on sale on Amazon for $10.74
Lastly, I wanted to put give you an update on Mooselette’s Mossberg 535. I still believe that a good turkey hunter needs a dedicated turkey gun. Second, I still believe a used pump in serviceable condition is ideal for the purpose. If you’re doing it right, it’s going to get wear and tear.
Unbeknownst to me, I bought Mooselette’s Mossberg 535 at the same time Moose was buying a Mossberg Maverick 88 for the MooseWoman. My choice was a used (some might say abused) fixer-upper. Moose’s choice was brand new in the box.
Mossberg Maverick 88
On the other hand, this is Mooselette’s gun:
In this case, the fixer-upper, although much cheaper to initially acquire required two trips to the gunsmith. What started out as a Christmas present was not in Mooselette’s hands until just be Yute Season in April. If I had to pick a choice for a dedicated turkey gun right now, it’d be the Maverick 88.
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