Nebraska Success!

[123fish]

Went to the sandhill region of north central Nebraska this last weekend to try some turkey hunting. The land we were hunting reminded me exactly of the Caledonia area we have hunted the last eight years except for trees you had pines and cedars and once you were out of the valleys on top it was range land instead of crop land. We had no luck on Saturday even though we heard some gobbling and the weather was pretty nice in the morning. Two different blinds never saw a hen or gobbler. Late Saturday afternoon brought a thunderstorm with hail that left the truck with some pretty good dents. Insurance adjuster comes today. Sunday morning it was raining hard and a northeast wind was blowing about 25-30 mph. We had moved to a different spot from Saturday and we had two blinds three hundred yard apart on top of a valley that bordered a big chunk of rangeland. Never heard a gobble but my buddie's brother ended up shooting a bearded hen and this guy's son shot a nice two year old gobbler that had seen the decoy from about two hundred yards away and marched right in even though it never did gobble or strut. It was both of these guy's first turkeys so we were pretty happy for them even though my buddy or I weren't about to shoot a bearded hen. We stayed in the blind from 6:30 that morning until 5:00 that afternoon. It rained and blew the whole while until it finally started to break about three in the afternoon. Easily the most miserable turkey hunting day that I have hunted in the last nine years. Thank God for being able to sit in a blind.

Monday morning broke clear and calm. Perfect! We went back to our blinds and it wasn't long and the gobbling started. We were in a good listening spot and you could hear gobbling all over our valley and the adjoining valleys. Nothing came into our field other than a couple of hens though.About 9:45 my buddy decides to make a move on a gobbler gobbling like crazy in a adjoining valley. We had to quit at 11:00 so he was going to try to make something happen. About 10:00 I hear a gobble a long ways off in the valley that I'm sitting over. I start doing some yelping which brings a hen that is in the field over to me and the decoy. She stays about 20 yards from us and yelps on her own. Between her yelping and me yelping I can hear this gobbler gobble every once in a while and sounds like he is getting closer. I know he's coming when he gobbles after the real hen yelped a couple of times and he gobbled agin after I did two different series of yelps. I put the call down and picked up the gun. We were tucked around the corner of this fenceline that I couldn't see around and knew he was probably working down the fenceline. Ten seconds later he pops around the corner and is running in as fast as a turkey can go. He sees the blind and stops at twenty five yards and stares right at me. He finally makes a move towards the decoy and I put the gun up and covered his head with the barrel and gave him a serious lead headache. He didn't even twitch after the shot. He was a nice two year old about 18 lbs. with .75" spurs and 7.5" beard.

My buddy who had made the move on the other gobbler said the one I shot had come from about 400 yards away and came down from half way up the opposite side of the valley and then across the bottom of the valley and then up and out on our side. He popped out 73 yards away from the other blind saw their decoy went into strut and instead of going to the kid's decoy turned and came the 200 yards to me and the live hen. We must have sounded pretty sexy I guess. The boy got to watch the whole thing and said it looked pretty cool. My only regret was my buddy had left because this would have been his first bird. Had a good time and would definitely go back.

[Schloogs]

Congrats on the turkey 123Fish, sounds like you had a good time. I may have to try it one of these years.

[HateHumminbird]

123:

Great story, and congratulations on your success!

Joel

[Borch]

Congrats on a tough but successful trip!