Nine gobblers off this roost in about 15 years of turkey hunting. Last year's hunt was pretty memorable and folks seemed to enjoy my description:
http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,46083.0.htmlThis morning, with a mere 4 hours sleep under my eyelids, I was headed out to One Two Eight Roost, named for the morning years back when I counted 128 birds leave that roost site. I had my .62 cal smoothbore flintlock loaded with an ounce and an eighth of bismuth #4's over 70 grains of powder. This year I was kitted out in 1770's era clothes, too. Two linen shirts under a long collarless wool weskit (vest), woolen breeches, stockings, canvas leggings, and a knit cap. But this year I was carrying a slate turkey call made for me by tattoo dave, of Primitive Archer Forum fame! I also had an osage orange tubular call with a bone mouthpiece. It mimics a turkey wingbone call nicely, but is much more durable and can stand being sat on!
Dave's slate is a work of art, cedar pot, thin fine grained slate, a purpleheart striker with a lovely deer antler crown perched on top. It has a high pitched yelp on one edge, goes all low and raspy across the middle, and makes a purr that can't be touched! It got a light workout this morning, since I was set up right close to the roost. No sense drawing their keen eyes to my position. Boy howdy, I am going to love useing this call to death! ....a gobbler's death that is!
There was more than the usual grass growing on the 45 degree slope last year and it was still standing this spring. Dry grass is as slick as snot on the soles of my moccs and I had to use my face to cushion my fall in the dark any number of times. Be danged if I was gonna drop that lovely curly ash stocked flintlock in the dark and ding it up. Not when I have a face that dings could only improve! It took me a bit longer than usual to get to a position, but I was still there in good time.
It was a beautiful morning for turkey hunting, 45 degrees, half moon in the sky, no clouds, no wind. We'd had a little rain recently and the pine needles were whisper quiet under the moccasins. The moonlight illuminated the deer path that led from my seat to the roost tree and down under the ridgeline. The roost was silhouetted in the moon, kinda like a tacky low-rent print at a conservation banquet auction. I could count at least 6 birds in the tree. Legal shooting time was still 30 minutes away, and I turned up the collars on my shirts, hunkering down to wait for the typical cold updraft breezes that come right at sunrise on these ridges.
I was just about nodding off when I hear some soft tree yelps across the road. This miserable split roosting on either side of the road is gonna be the death of me, yet! The birds on my side open with a few soft yelps and the birds across the road hit the brass gong with a series of hard gobbles. Gotta be at least 4 adult toms over there. The gobblers answer on my side and then birds all up and down the canyon begin to chime in lustily. There are hens, jakes, and adult toms ringing away like church bells on Easter morning up in their ponderosa pine steeples in the sky. And I am in my usual pew, here in church where I belong.
I figure at least another 4 toms and several jakes on my side of the road! I'm still in the game here, I tell my self. I got good position, I am situated over a nice strut zone just outside of where they would hit the dirt at fly-down, with the birds across the canyon and over the road on private land at my back.
Once I would have said it was a dead brass railroad lock on a kill, but after several hundred times having been outwitted by birds with brains the size of a shelled pecan, I am too experienced to make that mistake. No, I am going to sit here and take my medicine like a man. Crooketarrow tells me that so long as you don't give yourself away or reveal yourself to a flock, you haven't hurt yourself just by talking with them. so I do a little talking with both the osage and bone yelper as well as tattoo dave's slate.
Further down the ridge comes the turd in the punchbowl. It's a raspy two or three reed latex mouth call that sounds like it is being blown into a red plastic solo cup, with too slow rhythm. Every time he calls, the birds shut up. I suspect he knows it and he calls only infrequently. Good choice. In my mind, I hope this only pushes the birds closer to me when they pitch, but in reality, I was sure how it would play....and they must have read my mind, because they followed the script perfectly and flew across the road onto private land. All told, it looked like about 25 birds on the roost. I was home and making coffee by 6:30, getting ready for work.
Its hunting. If I just had to have a bird this morning, I would have hit the freezer section of the supermarket. For the rest of you turkey addicts, get out there, pitch your next inning and come back and share the story!!!
