It’s Over, 2019
Yesterday, the On-this-date widget that compiles all the posts for the current date stated
Nothing has ever happened on this day. <em>Ever.</em>
Turkey Hunting went out with a whimper on our Ridge. Things kept piling up and it finally left me coming home in the rain yesterday afternoon.
For a start, it was going to be rainy on Saturday, so Moose decided to wait until the afternoon to run Mooselette down. I ended up hunting Saturday morning all by myself. It was just as well, because my allergies kicked up in the middle of the night, and I went out coughing and hacking. The turkeys were playing it quiet. I heard one gobble way off the property before legal hunting started; I heard one shot around 0730. That was it. Mostly it was just me out there wheezing in the fog. I came in early and tried taking a nap before the Dream Team started arriving.
Security Camera caught the Shaman succumbing to defeat
Moose called first. Mooselette had developed strep throat overnight. She was just coming back from the doctor. Scratch two. Angus called next; he wasn’t down for getting humiliated again in the rain. That left me with a bad wheeze facing Sunday, the last day of season, alone in the rain. I pulled out and was safe and warm and dry in my recliner watching Netflix by dinnertime. This is one of those odd turn-arounds. Normally, the weekend finds me escaping to the farm to save my lungs from the bad air in the city.
It is not like I am missing all that much. May has not been a good month for us for turkey hunting. I think we’ve scored a total of one Jake in 18 seasons. The big reason is that we’re tagged out going into May a good number of years. It also seems like the gobblers have started to lose interest by now. Kentucky has but one weekend in May left for turkey, and it has been mostly a pro-forma event.
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It was a tough season for me, and even tougher for my Father. We struggled all season. The birds just didn’t respond, and weren’t vocal at all. Dad blanked out for the second season in a row. I tagged out this season, but just barely. I harvested a silent bird on a cold, rainy Good Friday, Shot completely over a gobblers head the Sunday after that, and hardly heard a peep the whole next week until yesterday (the last day of the season). Dad and I hunted his farm on the last day, and I immediately heard a bird in the clover field way below in the valley at first light. I begged him to go hunt my wooden blind, but he refused. So I went and set up in it. This bird gobbled all morning but he didn’t want to come to my location, so I just went silent. That is my only trick to get hung up gobblers to close the distance. Make their curiosity get the better of them. The gobbler came in from an odd direction, and was very hesitant to come near the blind. This makes me think it is the bird I missed the Sunday before. He finally gave me a shot at 35 yards…. and my gun wouldn’t go off! I tried a couple of times to get it to fire before getting frustrated and racking another shell into the chamber. This caught the gobblers attention, big time. He began to run, and got to 40-ish yards before he hesitated, so I shot. He crumpled into a pile, to my amazement. He had a 10 1/2″ beard and 1″ spurs. I found out that the gun malfunction was totally my fault. When I loaded it in the dark that morning, I didn’t get the chamber closed all the way. A mistake I won’t be making again!