Larry A. Smail's Blog

I have not been able to hunt hardly at all. I have a commitment that doesn’t allow for much wood’s time. I’ll detail that commitment at another time. I didn’t get to hunt the early muzzleloader season.

This morning, I was watching the news as my mother came and said she was going back to bed. Within a few moments I decided to grab my gear and see if I could hear any turkeys just up the road from her home. I left a note saying I would be back around eight. I parked around 6:40 A.M.

I walked the field’s edge as the morning fog became lighter and heard nothing. At the jeep, I unloaded my gear with the thought of returning to the house by eight. However, I saw three gobblers entering the woods in the distance. Needless to say, I became ready for a breakup…hopefully.

I entered the woods near where I had seen the birds and moved close to where the woodlands drops off rather step. I saw gobbler heads and at the break, two moved away to my right and one went towards my left down over into a gulley.

Here is where things get unbelievable to me. The gobbler that went left began to come back. Not only did the bird come back he moved upslope towards me. Although this is not the way I traditionally hunt turkeys I just had to shoot the bird at about ten yards while I was standing.

Then my luck went south, so to speak. The gobbler bounced backwards and rolled down the steep hill twenty yards or more. That roll soaked the bird’s feathers in the wet leaves thus not allowing for the perfect photos I would have desired. Oh well… I made it to the house around 8:30!

The gobbler was in the twenty-pound class. I didn’t have a scale so I can’t say exactly the bird’s weight. The beard was slender but measured ten and a half inches in length. The spurs, as viewed in the photos, were impressive. One was one and three-eight’s inches long. The other spur was one and one eight inches.

I hope things change for me some for I wouldn’t mind chasing a Black Bear later this month.