Hi all! been absent for a while. Work, new cabin, other interests and a small dose of burn out has kept me away from here for the most part since February. With fall coming quickly though I thought it was time to take a morning walk with what will be this fall's weapon of choice, so Sunday morning I let the wife sleep in while I snuck out back and up the logging road headed for the ridge that runs along our river and any stumps that might be found along the way.
Dropping off the road and into the thickness of the north facing hill, it was obvious that this was a target rich environment. The problem was that the obstcals surrounding those targets, and the rocks that lay beyond, were a bit tougher on my woodies than I had expected.
15 minutes into my hike, my quiver consisted of as many dead soldiers as it did live ones, and I quickly realized I needed to start being a little more careful with my shots if I expected my walk to last. As I putted along the ridge above the river, I quickly spotted something that should catch any trad archer's eye. Not one, but several primaries lay in the duff among the stumps above the river.
Stopping to look around, I quickly realized why these feathers were here. See, this ridge over the river is a favorite roosting area for what my wife calls the "Barnyard Gang", a rather large flock of turkeys that for the most part live here on the farm undisturbed. It's not unusual to see 20 - 30 at a time in the summer months not including the young'ins. They tend to roost here on the ridge, and this here is obviously one of their favorite roost trees.
A quick walk around this tree produced several dozen feathers. primaries, secondaries, tail, breast and back feathers were literally everywhere. In this picture there are 3 primaries and a secondary. can you see them all?
Being a scavanger at heart, I of course started picking up any that could be used for fletching. It soon became apparent that picking and shooting was not going to be easy. Every time I saw a stump, I had to put down my treasures to shoot. As I worked along the ridge I soon ran out of hands to carry all the feathers and had to leave them in a pile to be picked up later. See these turkeys roost all along the ridge. about 200 yards from the first roost tree, there's a cliff that the birds use as a launch pad. there were dozens more feathers laying around here.
Topic: bow hike turned turkey (feather) hunt (Read 443 times)
