For the past ten years, I have spent a good deal of time out at The Honey Hole. The Honey Hole has been my goto spot for both Turkey Hunting as well as my pre-season recording sessions that end up in my podcasts. It has been a fantastic spot to hunt– probably about 20 gobblers have been shot by the Shamanic Dream Team. However, The Honey Hole is over. It came to an end sometime in the fall. We must have had a bad windstorm and the old tree fell over. I was heartsick when I saw the old trunk had fallen.

It was back in 2005, if I remember correctly, when I first discovered the Honey Hole. I had been down in Pity Creek, chasing gobblers, and decided to come out the long way over Heartbreak Ridge. When I got to the top, I heard some gobbling and stopped off for a rest at a blind I had been putting together a few sticks at a time in the fence line that runs down the middle of the property. After an hour, nothing had showed up, and I did a little poking around before I headed in. The fence line ran along the old Browningville/Powersville Road, which had fallen into disuse in the early 1900’s. The families along the road were all related and they kept it open for many years so that they could all get to church in one wagon, but that was probably a hundred years ago. All that remained a few sunken patches of road in the woods and a line of old red and white oaks that had lined the road. To either side of the treeline were narrow pastures, and depending on the weather, time of the season and such turkeys could be found roosting in the nearby woods or feeding out in the pastures.

What made the Honey Hole special was the fact that there was a little bit of this and a little bit of that and an old fence met up with the old road and the south end of one pasture met up with the north end of another pasture. In the midst of all this were the tall oaks and just before a break in one of the fences there was one special old oak, a wee bit wider than the others and a wee bit closer to one side of the pasture and very very dead. That morning back in 2005, I started eyeing that old dead tree and started thinking about how it might make a good set-up, especially with the dead logs and dead limbs around it. Within a half-hour or so, I had things just right. A few logs blocked the turkeys’ view coming from one direction, a large log became an ideal spot to place a yute hunter. I moved a few rocks around to give me a raised place for my calls. There was even a dense cedar tree that overhung the big log, so a couple of us could crawl up underneath and wait out a shower

The Honey Hole started to shine in 2006, and it was not long before we were taking 2 or more gobblers from there every year. Pretty soon, I knew that if you could not hear turkeys at the Honey Hole, it was probably not going to be a good day anywhere else. Within a couple of seasons, I was camping out there every morning. The action was that good. Oh sure, I had other places to go, and some days I would deliberately try and stay away. However, the lure of the Honey Hole went deep, and it got to be that it just was not turkey season if I did not put my back to that old rotten trunk.

About 5 years ago, I noticed big limbs had fallen off the trunk, and I even started shying away from it when the wind was really blowing, not wanting one to come down on my head, but within a couple of years they were all gone and the only thing was the one big trunk. I was there for the Opener last season, and I spent my last minute of hunting there as well in May.

There is another big oak just 10 yards down the way. In some ways it might be better. I can probably drag a log over and set it up in a similar way I had the log set up for the kids. However, I tried sitting there the other day and. . . well, it just was not the same. For one thing, I cannot see the stretch of road to the north. That had been a particular feature of the Honey Hole. Gobblers would hear me out on Virginia Ridge and then make the long walk around, coming up to the old road and then all the way around. Several times I could get them all lined up in my sights as they strutted down the road, and I new just the right cedar tree that, when they passed I could let loose with my load and be sure of knocking them dead.

For another, the cover at the edge of the pasture is not as high. There is a sort of shrub next to the Honey Hole that grows just high enough to block the gobblers view. On a sunny day the leaves reflect a lot of light and the difference between the bright green shrub and the deep shade made it so the gobblers could not see me raise my shotgun. At the new spot, the shrubs are not there, and you sit up a tad higher and a bit more exposed. I suppose I could transplant some of that shrub, but it is a slow grower. It might take 5 years to propagate to the point where it was useful.

EDIT:

I’ve been over a week late trying to get this out.  I’ve had a bad cold, and it settled in my chest. Maybe it was the cough medicine fogging my head, but  I just could not figure out a good way to finish this off. It is an odd piece.  How does a guy say goodbye to a dead tree?

Maybe this will do:

Podcast –The shaman at The Honey Hole

Hint: What I’d do is right click on the link and open it up in a new tab while you watch the slide show.

I was coughing my head off this morning, and I was reminded of the Turkey Opener back in 2011.  I’d left work on Friday with a bit of a sore throat and by Saturday morning, after rain and wind all night, I was beginning to feel something strange in my chest. It turns out both SuperCore and I had come down with pneumonia and we cleared out mid-week, but for this one Saturday morning, everything went well.

So there I was, my back to the tree at Honey Hole, sometimes doubled over with coughing, and it was just one of those fantastic mornings where the gobblers’ switches are all in the “ON” position.  They were honoring my coughs as much as they were my calls.  I had 3 jakes come in and then the biggest gobbler I have ever taken– 24.5 lbs. In the podcast, you can hear, just before the shot, I nearly muffed it all, because I was too weak at that point to control the gun and I  had to prop it on the old wire fence still attached to the Honey Hole tree to support the shot.  I remember taking that shot, and expected that gobbler to run, because the gun barrel was shaking so bad, but I had forgotten the barrel hitting the fence made it into the podcast.

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