Wednesday A.M.  This morning we went to a brand new location that hasn't been hunted the whole season. Finally, we also had some good weather. Practically the first time we've seen the sun in 4 days. It was clear, calm, and very cool, although we were pretty sweaty after hiking almost a mile in the dark to get to the "good" area. This property was mostly wooded, unlike the other areas we've hunted the last 3 days that have been a mixture of woods and fields.   We felt pretty confident that we would hear some birds gobbling this morning, with the nice weather, and we were right. They didn't gobble lots and lots, but they did gobble. We heard 3 birds gobbling on the roost, one was probably at least 500 yards away and the other two were probably half a mile away. They each gobbled about 4 or 5 times on roost and that was all. Then we didn't hear anything for probably an hour and a half. Steve decided to break out his really loud box call and try to locate a bird. He did two series of yelps on the call and we heard a gobble less than 1/4 mile away, and another probably twice that far. We got set up on the close bird and got him to answer us probably 3 or 4 more times, but he never got any closer. We set up for probably a half hour waiting to see if he would come to us, but he never did. We decided to go after the bird that was farther away, who was gobbling more than the near bird. We made a big circle on the ridge to get around on them. As we got closer, we felt like we were hearing at least 2 different toms together. We closed the distance to a few hundred yards and came upon the only field, a small one, that we saw all morning. It wasn't a real good set-up, because if the birds were in the field we would have to call them across a deep ravine. Also, the only way we had consistently gotten the toms to gobble was with a crow call, they were only rarely answering a turkey call. On the other hand, approaching the field was risky because they might see us. We decided to try sneaking on the field, but it was a lost cause. We saw a few hens directly, but they had already seen us. They trotted out of the field into the woods, with 2 longbeards in tow.  Here was our first set-up of the morning it looks flat, but it was actually pretty downhill  Our second set-up of the morning trying to ambush the two toms we saw We made a BIG circle to try and get around them. When they left the field they walked away on a bench on the side of a hill. We got about 600 yards ahead of them on that bench, in the hopes they would stay on the bench and eventually we could ambush them. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. We sat tight for an hour or so, calling occasionally, but neither heard nor saw any turkeys. That ended my West Virginia turkey hunt. The weather was pretty tough while I was there, and I really had to work hard to get the one tom that I got. I had a great time, though, seeing the new country and learning the habits of turkeys in different areas. I want to thank my friend Steve Galusky for inviting me up to hunt, and I look forward to hunting with him again in the future. 
Joshua Flournoy owns and manages the Livehunts.com web site. He also arranges exciting hunts through his business Longleaf Hunting Adventures. Joshua resides in east Texas with his wife and four children. |
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