That was a pretty good few days of hunting.

The birds definitely were not coming in hot...had no problem getting all kinds of responses, from hens and toms both, at a distance...but once they got close they clammed up and came in quietly.

The first afternoon I set up with my two shooters in front of me with the likeliest 300 degrees of egress covered by the two of them...started calling and we spotted a hen 300 yards away on the hustle, she came right into our set, and for a while was literally six feet from the tip of Nick's gun barrel.

Eventually she froze, looking past me...and I knew we were fukkered. Nick and my old man were looking at me, looking behind me, and there was nothing I could do. Eventually I turned around and realized why they couldn't shoot; there were four mature toms that all came in together, they were packed in a tight group, and were no more than 10 or 12 feet directly behind me, and I was directly between them and my shooters.

Oh, well...it was still pretty cool for our first hour out there.

Since it was an area I had never hunted before we spent three days trying to figure out roosting areas, routes to water, and what they were eating...and it turned out to be the best kind of scouting weekend, the kind where I shot a couple, and Nick got his first one ever.

We will be far better prepared next time...though next time will be when the fall season starts, and I have never hunted turkeys in the fall before, so it will probably be a bit of a learning curve again for that.

Fish on...

Todd