well as like most of you on the site here, i spend a fair amount of my spring chasing buzzards down and just thought i would share this years tales or as i like to call it
"chasing them buazzards"
well bow season started off kinda slow for me here in ctrl. mn.,took off work early on the 16th of may and set up right where the land owner recomended.
"yup",gary told me,"you set up near that thar popple grove over yonder and day,day and half you'll have yer bird"."everyone thats been here gunning it this year has been back there and have taken six biguns outa here so far"."there aint been no one hunting for a week now,you got the place to yourself for the last two weeks of turkey season".
yup,i'm thinking to myself,this should be a piece of cake.
i had spent weeks and even months,like i do every spring,scouting and trying to pattern the buzzards with the least amount of intrusion into their domain.i hunt this piece of private land every year,have been for about 7 years now.so i dont feel it to be of utmost importance to actually get into the woods there before the season starts.his land is backed by a large county park thats doesnt allow hunting,has a lot of agricultre fields etc.the buzzards and the deer seem to live in the park and come onto his property for feeding etc.,his woods does hold some roosting birds,but not many.once the sun comes up and the birds leave thier roosts,his land is filled with birds.
well after three days of sitting near that popple grove and only seeing hens,and having numerous young deer come up to my ground blind( i'm talking 3-4 yds away).
my wife(one of my two fav. hunting partners) and i watched a young buck play with my decoy.he would walk up to it,grunt at it,bump it with its nose,which would cause it to spin.this would make the young buck jump back,then he would do it all over again.my wife and i watched him for about two hours until he got bored and wandered off.
i tried another set up on day four,this time by myself.this set up was little better atleast i had seen a tom this time out,no gobbling as of yet though.
on day five,my youngest son(my second fav. hunting partner) who is 18,came with. we set up in the same spot that i had the day before. we heard gobbling at 5:15 am.
we both started to get that feling,you know the one.
well we seen the birds off to our right about three hundred yards away,we were getting closer everyday now.well lunch time came,so we went home to get a bite to eat.(we hunt only 15 mins from home).we talked about whre we should set up after luch and decided the we would go to spot where the wife and i see birds every evening.
when my son and i returned to the field guess what we saw,thats right four huge toms right where we want to be.my son says"what do we do now dad?".
i tell him we just slowly get our gear and they should wander off into the trees,and yup thats what happend.we very hurridly walked the 3/8 of a mile walk to the tree line and got set up.my son then ask "now what dad,the buzzards are gone?". i tell him not to worry they didnt get spooked,they'll be back.
after some very very soft,subtle calling and a very long hour had passed,out of the trees come two nice looking long beards.they start looking at me decoy very cautiously. they make an arc around our set up and keeping a distance of 57 seven yards the whole time.when the get 180 degrees around to the other side they start to very slowly walk into our set up. i whisper to my son," i'll take the on on the right,you take the one on the laft as the pass us ok".
well the yhad other ideas,the first one started to run thru our set up,but he was only 26 yars away.i take a deep breat,exhale as i draw. itry to lead him just a little bit.just as i touch my release he starts tu run even faster and i shot under his rump,damn.my son is trying to follow his bird but cant get a clean shot.well needless to say,neither of got one that day. however we did the things that matter most,atleast to me,we talked like father and son,we talked man to man and most of al we talked as friends,damn good day of hunting if you ask me.
well its now day seven of bow season.
the wife and i stop in the woods late this day for a couple hour hunt. we set up right on a trail in the woods with doulble bull blind.we are watching a couple of toms acrss the field strut for dominance,"cool" my wife says. the whole time we re set up on the trial we keep hearing this rustling noise behind us.everytime we look out the back of the blind we dont see any thing but brush.we just kinda forget about it and keep and eye out for buzzards.
after a couple of hours and dark is setting in,we decide to pack it in and hit hard the next morning.we get the blind and all my gear packed into my wildthing pack.we start walking back down the trail to the car.we dont get thirty paces when we hear this very loud,high pitched bleating sound. we start looking around us,now i am not kidding about this,not three feet away from me right on the edge of the trial where the brush starts we seei it.we couldnt belive out eyes,a very new born fawn.this thing was so close to new born,it was only about the size of a large house cat,it could barley get on its legs and stay balanced to run away.here we are with no camera.
i figure thats what we herd in the brush,it looked like it may have been only a couple of hours old when we set eyes upon it. man nature is awesome.
well now its day nine of bow season and i'm in the woods from 4:30 am untill dark and i dont leave for anything short of regestering a bird.
the wife and i set up in a spot where i have heard birds gobble for the last two days and seen them strutting for hens,thank the gods for that.
we get set up well before sun up and hear gobbling about a hundred yards behind us just before sun up.now this late in the season most bow hunters always hear the birds gobble behind them. this is because the woods are so filled with cover now that trying to get a half way decent bow shot is almost impossible,so you set up on field edges and tree lines.
we here the tom fly down,he hits the ground gobbles hard,real hard.he gobbles so hard you feel it deep into your bones,this is what its all about.i grab my friction call and yelp three times real soft,he hammers back with another bone shaking gobble.we both started to think it but neither of us could say it,"this is it",we knew that anything could and probably would happen.yup it did too,we heard gobble again.this time further away,and again but even furhter away.just then we heard atleast three more gobbles,these woods were full of hot birds.everytime they goble though,my heart sunk.they were walking away from us in the woods.
a few minute later they wlaked out of the woods about three hundred yards to my left right at the trail opening of the woods. damn, i thought to myself,thats right where i always set up on this field and always have good luck right there,but i have never seen anything like this before.let me set the mood a little here.
the weather on this day is terrible.thunderstroms are threatening and cloudy as can.the only part of the field that has and color is near the irrigation ditch where its to wet to disc,the filed is green and covered in yellow flowers,and this is the only spot that there is sunshine.
ok like i was saying,at the the trail opening of the woods out walk six very large toms in full strut,followed by eight jakes and about ten or twelve hens.WOW THIS IS SWEEEET.we both were in aew of this beautiful sight,and once again no camera.
we never did get a shot at a bird that day,however my wife learned what it was like to sit out a thunderstrom in a ground blind.lots of fun as long as you have it anchored real well.
any how there were a few more days of hunting. we never did fill a tag this year. so its buzzards 3,hunters 0. well some say that ifn you dont fill your tag its a bad hunting season.
to me theres more to the hunt than just filing my tag. i like to think that if you get a cahnce to see nature and its beast on their terms,at thier finest undisturbed moments,with people you love and you become closer to them and nature. well i guess you just cant have a better hunt than that.
p.s.
if anyone has a good recipe for TAG SOUP please let me know.
and maybe i'll tell you haow and why i shot my hunting blind.
thanks for reading my long winded story
tim
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