So Turkey Season has been open for 3 weeks this Saturday and I haven’t been out chasing gobbles once. Weather has been perfect, sunny and warm.
I called up my hunting buddy Cal and said” We gotta set a date to hunt together.” After playing phone tag for 2 weeks we finally picked April 11th. Sure enough the weather man is calling for 2 inches of rain. But we are determined to hunt Sunday morning come Hell or High Water (which was a real possibility.)
I had secured permission to hunt on a ranch a couple miles down the road. This gentleman, first generation immigrant from the Azores Islands off of the coast of Portugal, was more than happy to grant me permission.
I really treasured spending time talking with him a couple nights before as we sampled his homemade wine and “white lightning” as the sun went down and we watched a large flock of turkeys strutting on the distant hills fly up into a eucalyptus grove to roost. Yeah, that’s where we wanted to be come morning.
Cal arrived at my house well before daylight and we were set up in a portable blind, with two hen decoys out front as the sky began graying up in the East. It hadn’t started raining yet but the wind began to pick up and coming from the South. Soon a gobble echoed up the canyon, and through my binoculars, I found the tom roosted in the grove. Soon we picked out more birds roosted in neighboring trees as they began to talk among themselves. The tom would gobble, and then hens would call back. Finally the tom flew down and began to strut 126 yards away, as we watched through binoculars.
At this point we were worried that the real thing might pull our target in the wrong direction. Cal began wooing him with seductive clucks and yelps from his slate call. Cal would call, the turkey would gobble and a chorus of excited yelps would follow from the ladies auxiliary still in the branches. Cal resumed his calling with gusto and pretty soon there are six hen turkeys flying in our direction. They landed running and in a split second they were only 50 yards from the blind and the gobbler was hustling in our direction.
The hens fed over in front of us at 12 yards and began socializing with our two decoys that were moving in the wind pretty erratically. The gobbler positioned himself on the horizon 30 yards away. Puffed up and strutting, the increasing frequency of the raindrops didn’t deter him from putting on a show.
Cal whispered “John, 30 yards. Stick him.”
Meanwhile, I am trying to get down on my knees to shoot uphill and out the blind window. Without spooking the hens 8 yards from the blind.
“SHOOOT HIM….” Cal hissed “that is a chip shot.”
But I never drew my bow, worried that the hens in the red zone would catch my movement through the side windows and blow out.
“John you aren’t gonna get him any closer.” said Cal, as the hens tired of the mute, bobbing mannequins they thought were their kin. One by one they fed back to our right and over the ridge.
I could sense Cal’s irritation as the rain began to fall steadily. As the rain intensity increased, the gobbler’s calling frequency decreased. Finally the whole flock had fed out of sight into a swale to our right and behind our blind and out of view.
We sat there as the rain steadily pelted our blind and dripped. I wanted to explain my reluctance to shoot, when a bird we hadn’t seen in the trees flew down to the spot the flock had vacated. From all appearances it was another hen. I found it odd she was alone. I could hear the flock calling, but she never answered back. We both shrugged and sat back to see if our new “live decoy” could pull in a gobbler.
Finally she began to feed in the direction of the flock, and the gobbler resumed his mating call. As she turned sideways on the ridgeline she was silhouetted and I saw A BEARD!
“Cal, that hen has a beard” I said.
He whipped up the range finder and said “Forty-two yards”.
By now he was drawn too.
My previous caution was thrown to the winds as I settled the 3rd pin on the top of the wing and squeezed off my shot. The arrow sounded like a baseball bat hitting a ripe melon as the bird toppled out of sight on the back side of the ridge.
After a quick high five, we noticed the Tom had come back into view as he looked over in our direction wondering what had just transpired. I grabbed my box call and began calling. In less than a minute he trotted from 50 yards on my right to directly in front of the blind.
I quickly ranged the inquisitive bird out of strut as he stood head on.
“Twenty yards” I whispered to Cal who was at full draw already.
The sound of the bow and the sound of the arrow hitting merged into one “KER-WHUMP” as the startled tom leapt in the air and landed running with Cal’s arrow passed nearly through his body. We both thought it would be an easy recovery, as we left the comfort of our hide and felt the brunt of the rain and wind.
I found my arrow where it had passed through my bird and the trail led to a patch of thistles below. I went over to Cal and his bird had headed for an even BIGGER patch of thistles. We spent the next hour blood trailing Cal’s bird. We tore apart that half acre patch of thistles and flushed him out into a creekbed where another arrow anchored him for good.
We walked back to the site of my hit and found my trophy hunkered down in another patch of thistles. It was indeed a hen. No spurs, no wattle, no fan, just a 5 ½ inch beard. Since the California upland regulations read “One bearded Turkey per day, Three per year” I am in compliance.
Cal’s bird was a real trophy though. It weighed 22 # with a 9 3/8ths inch beard, one wickedly sharp spur that measured 1 1/8th inch and a broken spur that still hit the 7/8ths mark on the tape.
This marked the third time Cal and I combined for a double on turkeys. I can’t think of a better team mate.
