This has been an unusual turkey season for me so I was happy when I finally filled one of my tags. Saturday I was sitting in my buddies blind(Rick) on our Alamance County lease. Most of our lease is fields and open land with small pockets of woods so running and gunning is not really an option.
The Ameristep blind was set up at the edge of the field that had been planted in tobacco last year, but plowed under after the crop was harvested, and now overgrown with weeds. Saturday was a warm day with off and on showers so hunting from the blind was a good plan. I had three decoys out; two hens and a Jake to hopefully entice a bird to close the distance if we called one to the field. Rick sat with me in the blind for the first few hours. We did call a hen out to the field but she looked the decoys over and just fed off. Rick had to leave so he shuck off and I settled in for what could be an all day hunt.
Shortly after Rick left a heavy shower rolled through but I kept calling and watching. Not long after the shower ended I got the feeling that something was coming even though I hadn’t heard or seen anything. I picked up my Mossberg 935 and got ready. In the back of my mind I was suspecting a coyote was sneaking in so I was surprised when four Jakes showed up near my decoy spread. I think they were equally surprised because I suspect they were only expecting to see the two hens. The sloping land had allowed them to cover the 50 yards or so from the woods to the decoys undetected by me but also prevented them from seeing the Jake decoy until the popped over the hill. What happened next was an amazing event to witness as all four Jakes ran straight at the Jake decoy stopping just a few feet behind it and all four gobbling at once. The sound about rocked me out of the blind and as soon as they did that they turned tail and started running back the direction they came from. In my haste I did not pick up or put a call in my mouth so I had little options so I yelled “Hey”. One bird stopped but the slope of the field all I could see was his head as he stuck it up to see who was calling him. The Mossberg 935 barked as the Remington Nitro #5 found the mark and dropped him. I saw the other three birds fly up into the trees at the other side of the field and I’ll admit I wasn’t 100 % sure I had gotten the bird until I got out of the blind. I paced it off and it was 43 paces a bit far but the results were a dead bird.
Believed it or not in all my years of turkey hunting this is the first Jake I’ve ever taken. While some don’t consider a Jake a trophy because it is a juvenile gobbler in this case this will be a hunt I won’t soon forget. This has been a tough year and next Saturday is the end of the season so I’ll have one more chance to fill my second tag.
