By Jerry Long, May 3, 2010 

With extremely limited time to hunt, my turkey season turns disastrous in a hurry.

My vacation time is limited this year due to the Africa adventure, see the Bowhunting Africa page, so turkey season was going to be very short.  The morning started out well – coffee was good and outdoor’s buddy Seth was along.  We’d set up in a spot that produced close encounters last year, see dv’s 2009 Turkey Season – Fried Tag, with Seth’s Primos’ Jake Mobile on point and my Flambeau Fair Lady hen nearby.

The Primos Jake Mobile decoy.

The Flambeau Fair Lady hen decoy – I think she’s givin’ you the eye.

Once settled in I decided to check shooting window clearance.  This check is always a good idea to avoid shooting through the side of the blind when attempting to put the smack down on a turkey.  Just because your sight clears the window doesn’t mean that broadhead, six inches lower, will.  As I got to about three-quarter draw, not yet beginning to point or aim, all heck broke loose.  As usual when things go wrong everything happened pretty quickly.

The arrow flew out the blind’s window and stuck Jake Mobile right in the head.  The bowstring was still in one piece, but was only half on the cams – stuck on the cable posts and axles.  As I sat there, mouth agape and thinking about field fixes, a turkey gobbled to the east.  Seth started looking for a rope of some kind to compress the limbs.  Then he jumped outside the blind to retrieve the arrow from Jake’s head mumbling about doing that once before when I missed a quickly moving South Dakota turkey and hit a large round hay bale.  Another tom gobbled from the north.

Helpful Hunting Note:  It is good to have a hunting partner with GREAT patience such as Seth.  On the same South Dakota trip mentioned above I tied his buddy’s Double-Bull blind into such a confounded knot it took two of us twenty minutes to straighten out.  Never a frustrated peep or action issued from him.

We sat there discussing options.  Another turkey gobbled.  The end result was I’d come to hunt and couldn’t do so with a broken bow.  We packed up, me with a heavy heart, and headed to the truck.  Back at The Brothers’ huntin’ cabin we sorted through Bessey woodworking clamps (not enough adjustment) and settled upon a long set of Irwin Quick Grip clamps.  After reducing the majority of the weight from the limbs we placed one clamp on either side of the limb-tips and pressed in tandem.  We each really needed one more hand apiece, but got the string back on the cams.  The serving was damaged on each end where it had hit the posts and my peep had fallen out.

Irwin Quick-Grip Clamps.

 

We returned all to nearly normal after a bit of shooting and tweaking.  A little un-nerved I kept the arrows in a six-inch circle at 20 yards, but the shooting was not up to my personal standard.  After taking a break and settling in I regained a little confidence.  My arrow had bright red paint and white on it from Jake’s head.  Pieces of feather fletching were missing here and there.  Jake is none-the-better for a 1 3/4″ Wasp Jakhammer hole just below his chin and a slice down the back. I intentionally avoided all pictures of the incident.   

We hit the field again making a couple of blind sits and a stalk on a tom without success.  The following morning the rain was coming down in torrents and the wind was blowing enough to move the tree tops 12-18 inches.  Oh well, there’s always next year, hopefully in Kansas…

happy hunting, dv 

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