Post by reowen51 on May 20, 2008 13:49:55 GMT -5
Day 6: Windy, Rainey and Cold
The title says it all. It was one of those mornings that I knew we could have accomplished as much from bed. When we got to the place we wanted to hunt an omen appeared and it should have sent us back to our beds at home. As I scanned the wood line for a comfortable tree for us to sit at I saw him. Black and white with a big bushy tail, a skunk, had the best place on the field’s edge to observe. We moved around him and proceeded to get skunked on the day. Not only did we not see a bird we didn’t hear one either.
Day 7: Things Are Looking Up or Maybe Down
Yesterday’s inactivity took its toll on Ray and I today. We both became a little impatient. I’m really pushing now and want very much to get Raymond a second shot at a Tom. The birds were slow to gobble this morning. We didn’t hear our first one till the sun was split in half by the eastern horizon. We marked birds on three sides of us all of them off the property we had permission to hunt. We were set up in the same location where Ray had missed a bird two weeks ago. Ray looked down at his feet and announced, “Look at that, I was in such a hurry to get out here I put my boots on the wrong feet!” I looked and sure enough they were.
At ten after seven, two strutting Toms emerged from the woods about a quarter mile away and teased us into believing they might come our way. Several times they turned and moved closer all the while making it clear they would cross in front of us and disappear when a rather large group of whitetails decided to cross the field also. Once the Toms had folded themselves back out of strut we lost them and have no idea where they went.
We crossed the field to the finger of woods that juts out into the property to check the woodpile. Sure enough when we rounded the bend there were three hens in the field there. They saw us and moved back into cover.
Having moved into this position we could now cross the field to the south of us using the woods to shield our movements from the two Toms we saw strutting earlier that morning. We set up. We saw nothing at all, for the next hour. A gobble pulled us off that set and we moved again only to find no birds.
We went back to the truck and changed locations. I saw one hen from our next set and Ray had had it with sitting. His mind which was connected to his mouth raced forward with ideas about where to go and what to try. I noticed a common theme. All his plans involved the truck.
“Let’s get back in the truck and drive around the section and locate a bird to go after.” He suggested. “You want to road hunt.” I asked him. “That’s not road hunting unless you
have a loaded shotgun in the truck and shoot out the windows!” I was informed. So we went and road hunted for the next hour.
We located a gobbler strutting through a recently planted soybean field. When he went into the fence line about 80 yards out, we sprang into action. He grabbed his gun from the back of the truck, loaded it and we raced up the fence line hoping to get a poke at him. It didn’t happen but we got close. Sixty yards ahead, where the fence line joined the woods I caught movement before we sat down. Two hens came out of the woods and ran down the field’s edge oblivious to us. Then I saw him. His white head bobbing with his long strides, he looked like a rutting buck chasing down the doe in heat. I yelped to stop and hopefully turn him. He stopped and flared up into a strut. He turned only his head and looked our way, not seeing a hen our way he folded back down and raced off after the two hens and was gone in a few seconds.
I have a hunting buddy in Florida who expressed earlier in the year an idea he had involving hen decoys and lawn darts. This was one of those times when something that silly just might have worked.
When I left Raymond at noon at his house he was searching the garage for that old set of lawn darts. I hollered out to him as I pulled out of the drive, “Why don’t you stop wasting your time and just switch your boots onto the right feet?” I should have insisted on him doing that earlier in the mornings hunt but thankfully we didn’t run into anybody we knew out there this morning. Geeze, if he would have killed that bird I can’t help but wonder if he would have remembered to switch them back to the right feet before the picture session.
