Checkmate!

Several weeks ago I mentioned that I would share my turkey season with you, but was hoping for a few more run-ins with Mr gobbler and maybe some other excitement that I'll sometimes run into. I know that a lot of you that read my blog don't actually hunt, and a lot of you that do hunt, don't actually hunt turkeys. And so I was hoping to find some adventure along the course of my hunting that I could share with you all.

Hunting turkey is a little bit like playing chess. Not everyone likes to play. But if you have a competitive bone in your demeanor, and you enjoy and have the patience to watch your competitor try to outsmart you, and you enjoy trying to outsmart him, you would probably make a great turkey hunter. And like chess, when you've been bested, instead of getting upset or giving up, you think about what might have gone wrong and so you try again to see if maybe there's something that you can do to sharpen your edge and win the next time. Every competitor plays a little different, and so you look forward to playing and trying to outwit your opponent. For lots of people the game doesn't sound like much fun and it's easy to say, what's the point? And like chess, if you haven't played much, you'll probably get beat. And if you play a lot, you'll win some and lose some. In the end, you'll find that the real joy will be in the playing. 

Turkey season in Maryland ends today. I was lucky enough to tag out earlier in the season and my hope was to get out a few more times with the kids.

 I shared several weeks ago about the kids youth season and the fun that we had. After that was the regular season. Anyone with a license can hunt the regular season and my hope was to get the kids out some more, but with all that they had going between doing school work, youth group activities and Aiyana playing on the varsity soccer team, early morning risings just weren't for them and so they didn't get out much.

For me, the season started out with a dreary morning that turned into a two day snowstorm. I had a lot of work to do and so I decided to skip out on those first two mornings. The third morning looked promising with no wind and sunny weather. Perfect for gobblers to gobble. I guess they are a little bit like us. Some days we sing and some days we don't. And they were definitely singing that morning. I heard several gobbles two hollows over but it was already daylight. With four or five inches of snow on the ground, I needed to be careful because I was sure that the turkeys would be able to see me from a long way off. The ridges and hollows are really steep around here and so it took about an hour and a half to get around to the ridge above them. By then they had flown down from their roost and been joined by some hens. I tried to call  but a sassy hen came in. She pretty much came right to me. She must have seen me because as she was clucking she all of a sudden sounded her alarm putt and took off, taking her boyfriends with her.

Later I had another gobbler answer my call. He came towards me and I was able watch him come in. He hung up just out of range. He would gobble and strut, gobble and strut. He was so beautiful and magnificent! I had never seen a gobbler strutting in the snow before. He had two hens with him and eventually they led him up over a bank and out of sight. It was a really fun morning and my only regret was that I wish that I would have taken some pictures.

Like any other hunter, I don't want to tell everyone my favorite hunting spots. Often when someone asks, "where did you get that one at?", I'll jokingly reply, "in my backyard". I like to think that since I'm a resident and pay my taxes, l'm  part owner of the Savage River State Forest. And so I have a really big back yard. It's approximately 54,000 acres.  Most people don't realize it, but the Savage River State Forest covers over 84 square miles.  I'm lucky enough to live in it and that's why I call it my backyard. It's lots of public land interspersed with private land. Some pieces are small and some are large. According to Google maps, where I got my first bird this year was 18 miles from my house.

It was a fun and beautiful morning. I had called in three gobblers. After taking one, the pack out back to my truck was a mile and a half. I say this just to share with you the magnitude of the forests we have around here. Even though it's nothing compared to out west, we do have lots of public land in Maryland, and our neighboring states probably have even more.

I found my second bird in the early part of May. As my parents are getting older, we've been taking turns staying with them at night. I had stayed with my parents and left really early so I could stop and hunt on my way home. This time Google showed me to be eight miles from my house. I heard some birds on the roost but didn't have any luck calling them my way. I then headed down a long ridge that ran down into Poplar Lick. There was lots of sign where the turkey's had been scratching under all of the poplar trees, but no turkeys were to be found. I climbed over several ridges and a gobbler answered my call. He didn't gobble much and didn't answer my next series of calls and so the next time I just clucked and he gobbled. I knew that there was lots of hunting pressure in this area and so I just clucked once in a while.  I also had a stick beside me and when he finally topped the ridge at a hundred yards or so, I scratched the leaves beside me to sound like a feeding hen. It must have worked because eventually he came in to about 40 yards and I rolled him. He had a really scraggly eight and a half inch beard and one and an eighth inch spurs. It seems that a lot of the birds that I find in the State Forest don't have the big and thick beards that I used to see on my dad's farm. I assume that that has to do with the tougher time the mountain turkeys have compared to the ones living close to farmland and crops. And that might even be why my beard just won't fill out like the ones that I see on Duck Dynasty.

And so that was my season. I was hoping to have a run in with a bear or coyote or a snake, something really exciting to write about. Sometimes that happens, but most times it doesn't.

We did have some excitement one day. Each year I like to go with some friends on an overnight backpacking turkey hunt. This year we wimped out because of some severe weather that rolled in. So we all just met in the morning and went hunting. My friend Nate found the skeleton of a really nice buck. It was exciting to see that even on public land with lots of hunting pressure, deer can grow old in these parts.

Just thinking about that stirs up memories from past turkey hunts, like the day I almost sat on a rattlesnake.

But maybe I can share those stories at another time. 

Our family is part of a homeschool group. And it's that time of year for homeschool camp. Jenelle and I will be leading the camp of a dozen or so youngsters, trying to make it a fun and valuable time for them. It will start later this morning. Time is ticking away.

I better move! I think that I'm in check!