I had a fantastic hunt a couple of week ago. The first day I had 17 birds within 30 yards of me and heard no less that 12 separate gobblers. There were so many birds around me, I couldn't draw without being seen. When I did decide to take a shot, I got busted by a big gobbler that was only 10 feet behind me. I didn't know he was there, until he started making his alarm putt. It was pretty funny. About 6 birds all started putting loudly, but they never did figure out exactly what I was. They eventually moved off and out of range. I had to end my day's hunt at noon, so I didn't get another shot.
The next day, I set up in a little better spot. I ended up calling in a huge tom from about 400 yards away. Long story short, I worked him right into my setup and shot him right after he spurred my jake decoy. The shot was at 15 yards and right where I wanted, high and right behind his wing butt. After flopping around for a few seconds, I thought he was down for good, my arrow remaining in him.
Right as I was congratulating myself, he hopped up, ran a few yards and took to flight. He flew maybe 100 yards, never getting more than 15 feet off the ground. He went straight into the thickest part of the swamp. He was definitely going down for the count the last I saw.
After waiting an hour, I went and got a buddy to help me find him, but after 2 hours of intense searching, we were unsuccessful. I have no doubt that we were right on top of him, but it was so thick that, unless we were standing on him, we couldn't see him. It made me sick to lose that bird. That is actually the first game animal, other than small game, that I've not been able to recover.
I called it a day and went back to the hotel to find a string tracker. My hunt ended up being cut short due to a death in the family, so I came home empty handed.
Topic: No blind turkey gang! (Read 2430 times)
