As y'all know, I always start out guiding in FL. Once again I went down early to scout, but after 5 days I hadn't found much to get excited about. After 15 years on these properties you'd think I'd have known better than to be worried, because once opening day arrived the turkey killin' commenced just like it always does. In the next 8 days all 7 of my guys got their Osceolas, and it only took that long because the final tom was an evil old rascal that fooled-n-schooled us for 3 days before sneaking in silent right before an intense thunderstorm that drove us from the woods.
The first 3 fellers were actually from my home town in Indiana, and we had BIG fun both in the woods and in camp. Here's Heath, his dad Gary, and Brian with Gary's unique tom (check out his tailfan...the middle feathers are shorter than the ones on the outside).
I didn't get a pic of Heath's opening-day bird, but Brian's arse-kicker of a tom is the next photo....he killed this bird in late afternoon, and in exactly the same spot as Gary had shot his in the morning.
Next up was a father-son team, and they were also a ton of fun to hunt with. John insisted that his son Chad got the first shot, and the hunt couldn't have transpired in a better, or more picturesque way. However, if people tell you FL doesn't get cold, then you can inform them that they don't know what they're talking about, because the three of us had to stand around for 20 minutes after the kill before we could stop shivering long enough to take pictures! The next morning John shot his tom from the exact same ground blind, and that gobbler walked within 10 feet of us before attacking my DSD strutter and getting a load of shot to the "all-over" for his efforts.
Then came Gregory...a 13 year-old young man out to get the 3rd leg of his Grand Slam. We had a classic hunt where we roosted a tom that walked away from us gobbling clear out of hearing range the next morning, so we then had to work hard and stay after it until calling in a pair of beautiful toms at 11 a.m. Gregory shot this one as he stuck out his neck in mid-gobble...as verified by excellent video footage his Dad Greg was shooting.
My final client for the year was Bradley, and we had a great 3-day chess match of a hunt which culminated in a memorable final episode and another very fine limbhanger.
These next few pictures are of FL also, taken as I traipsed around on public land and dealt with those evil, hainted Osceolas that I so-much love to hate. I'm telling ya, there isn't anything else quite like FL turkey hunting, and I eventually shot a couple birds in gorgeous surroundings. Being an El Nino year, it rained a LOT and I had to work my tail off for 13 days to get r' done. Yes, public land turkey hunting in the Sunshine State can be tough, but oh-so rewarding!
As I was leaving FL I stopped to see if my Grandparents old house on the St John's River was still standing. This was a very special place in my life while growing up, and the flood of memories was almost overwhelming when I walked down the long driveway to find that it hadn't been bulldozed-in and replaced with a million dollar mansion (as most of the neighboring places have been). My Dad and I built what's left of this old dock out into the river, and he actually died in this house, so I'm sure you can imagine the thoughts and emotions that were running through my head. It was hard to see the old house in its present state, but it also felt like I was coming home.
Next stop was Virginia, where I was asked to guide for the VA One Shot Turkey Hunt. My 9-year-old hunter should've killed a bird, but his "ace" guide failed him terribly by not bringing a blind...thus forcing a fidgety kid to try and sit still long enough to get the drop on edgy birds in very open hardwoods. Five spooked gobblers later, I was really kicking myself for that boneheaded lapse in judgment! It was a great event though, and my little guy won a gun at the post-hunt banquet. I also gave him one of my books, so he is definitely hooked on this turkey hunting thing! After that I got down to some serious turkey hunting with my two good friends, Doug Pickle and Ken Greene. We had a blast in some of my favorite countryside in the nation, but I was only able to shoot 2 of my 3-bird limit before having to travel a whopping 2 hours to Delaware, where I had drawn a Season C permit on State Forest land. The first picture is Doug and I with birds we killed the same day in different spots, and the next picture is Ken and I with a tom we sorta lucked-into. There's no other way to explain a tom gobbling on his own at 75 yards in the middle of an extensive pine plantation when you haven't heard anything else for an hour! The 3rd pic is of a nest Ken found near the last picture site that had 17 eggs.
I wrote in my book that Delaware is one of my least favorite states to visit, but that's not because of the actual hunting! No, I've had a number of wonderful adventures in her turkey woods, and I've met some really top-notch people, as well. Spring of 2016 would provide more of the same, and this fine old gobbler below was icing on the cake for yet another memorable trip to the land of chickens and garbage. The feathers at the base of the tree are something that I do quite often...sort of a tribute to the bird. The three shotgun shell brass driven into the tree are also a tribute....to my screwing up the initial shot, then having to shoot the tom again as he ran by at 10 yards. Despite a 3-inch hole punched through his side at the top of the legs, he still had his head up after going down so I administered a coup de grace; thus, three shells for one turkey. Oh, well......shappo happo, and he was an excellent tom with 1-3/8" spurs.
From there I hurried back over to try for my final VA tom. Ken and I got to experience a spectacular afternoon hunt on the first day when you could stay in the woods past noon, and at 3 p.m. he pulled the trigger on a tom that gave us a great show. An hour and a half later I did the same. Then, we forgot to take pictures!
Finally, I came home to Indiana for a brief 3-day spell. There is something absolutely enchanting about walking out your own front door to go turkey hunting, and it gets even better when you spend the next 4 hours dueling with a fine old tom before finally calling him in and pounding him in the face. The ridgeline I shot this bird on is also just about the prettiest place in the whole world to me! I don't own it, but it's public land that borders my own little slice-of-heaven homestead.
Up until this point my season had gone pretty well. Little did I know that things were about to change dramatically, due to a trip to Rhode Island. I hadn't been there in 7 or 8 years, so I was anxious for the chance to hunt there again and visit with my old friends Mark and JP. I figured it might take 3 or 4 days to get a bird on this state's heavily hunted public land, but then I could go on to hunt MA, VT, NH, and ME before season's end. Well, Rhode Island might just as well have been the twilight zone for me, because in 12 days of hunting I heard exactly 3 gobbling birds....and one of these turned out to be a group of 5 jakes that I called in on the 4th day! Finally, on Day 11 I found a tom willing to gobble and act right, but another hunter boogered him as he was headed toward a showdown with my Benelli. The next day it was 9:30 before he gobbled from distant private land, and 11:00 before he worked his way back across the road to ground that I could hunt. At my first yelp he raced in, only to swing out around me so fast, and in laurel so thick, that I couldn't get a shot despite the range being just 15 yards! After he kept going on a hard march (gobbling like crazy the whole way), I got depressed and frustrated in thinking that my only chance in 12 days was over and done with. There were now only four days left in the season as well, and I figured the possibility of having to eat tag soup was very real...and I hate tag soup! But, there was still some time left on the clock before Delaware's 1 p.m. shooting hours ended, so I still had a glimmer of hope. It sounded like this tom went directly toward a trackhoe moving boulders on the neighboring private property, although as he neared this heavy machinery I could no longer hear him gobbling. I strongly suspected that he went right on around it and up onto the public land ridgeline above, which was scratched to pieces and where he'd roosted the previous day. However, I couldn't be sure so I sat awaiting confirmation. Finally, the trackhoe operator quit for lunch at 12:20, and within a minute of his machine shutting down I could hear the tom gobbling....right up on that ridgeline like I'd suspected. A quick sprint and a couple calling sequences later, and my RI tom was flopping at my feet. I shot him at 12:45, with 15 minutes to spare! The second picture is with my good buddy John P Smith (JP, or The Jeep'er). Yes, the hunting was oh-so-tough in RI, but we had a great time hanging around and eating LOTS of icecream in hopes of bringing us good luck!
Rhode Island took up far too much time, so I had to then alter my plans a little. Last spring I found a great farm to hunt along the Connecticut River Valley in Vermont, so that's where I headed next and once I got there it was not a problem finding turkeys....just ones with long beards! Every day I saw anywhere from 16-22 jakes, but for the first 3 days I couldn't find any adult toms. Then, I got on a longbeard that flew out onto an island in the river and gobbled from there all morning. I figured he'd eventually come back, so I left him alone and later that morning I found another tom north of there about a mile. I shot him after a short, intense hunt near these railroad tracks in the first picture. Later that afternoon I got to finally shake hands and visit with none other than the famous Cove, who had just finished up his own US Slam in NH the day before. We had a great time talking turkey and driving around looking for birds, and then we stayed up way too late in camp continuing to yack about this sport that so-drives our very souls. It's good to occasionally find other people who are as crazy as I am, and believe me....Dave Owens is certainly turkey-nuts!! The next morning I shot my island-hopping tom and headed for Maine, while Dave stayed around and harassed those VT gobblers.
With time running low, I then chose to finish up the season in Maine. Here are my host and hostess with the most'est....Henrick and Marivi, along with Alex the Dog. They are great folks, good friends, and we share a lot of laughs and good times. Marivi is also an aspiring huntress, so I was really hoping to help get her first turkey. I shot two good toms in the first 2 days, then spent a day hunting with another great friend of mine, Les Peters, a fellow turkey man (I say that as a high compliment) who works at LL Bean. Then, with only one more day to go before I had to leave for home with 30 live lobsters in the coolers, Marivi and I gave it a last great effort. At noon, with the temperature up around 88 degrees, we finally got a tom gobbling and coming in fast, but he hung up directly behind the stone wall we sat against, on someone else's property. He was only 15 yards away from us, where he gobbled, spit, drummed, and carried on for 25 minutes before wandering on down the wall and finally crossing into land where we had permission to hunt. But, he wouldn't come back to us, and eventually faded away. I asked Marivi if she got excited when the tom was gobbling virtually in our back pocket, and she told me that she thought her heart was gonna pop out of her chest. Maybe we didn't kill that tom, but there's no doubt that we have another turkey hunter amongst our midst!!! I can't wait to come back next year and see her smile when we make it all come together.
So ended the 2016 season. I spent 68 days out in the turkey woods and yet again confirmed for my soul that there is absolutely nothing else in the world I'd rather be doing. I hope y'all had good seasons too, and have enjoyed this little pictorial.
, but I'm already looking forward to spring 2017.
