Western trip

hawglips

Old Mossy Horns
This year I made another trip to Nebraska and then to Utah with my brother, which we haven’t done in a few years. I elected to buy two tags for Nebraska while my brother only got one. We only had Monday and the early morning on Tuesday to hunt in Nebraska because I was hoping to kill a Rio (for a single season slam) in Utah and my brother’s schedule would not allow him to hunt past Thursday. It was late in the breeding season for low altitude birds and not many places to go for a pure blooded Rio. So we expected the Utah Rio to be very iffy.

We did arrive in Nebraska in time the night before to try to roost something to give us a Headstart for the next morning. I roosted a coyote induced shock-gobbling Tom, so I knew exactly where I would start the first morning. In the meantime my brother found multiple birds roosted together close to our cabin, and was in great shape for Monday morning.

Walking back to the cabin in the dark (we forgot lights on this trip) we encountered what in the low light appeared to be some sort of bird in the prairie grass standing tall with light markings and apparently trying to scare us away from a nest or something. We tried to get as close as we could to see what it was, and then it started charging at us. We jumped back as we realized the “bird” was actually a skunk with tail up in full warning mode about to spray us. It was actually a very close call and we felt very fortunate not to get hammered by the threatening skunk.

The first morning arrived foggy and damp. I left the cabin at 4:00 and made the 1 mile walk in the dark to my pre-determined set up location and found a good spot to sit down. The tom began to gobble at about 4:45 and I waited as long as I could before I started calling. To make a long story short, he gobbled a lot but never showed any apparent interest in my calling, and flew down and went the other way. He only gobbled twice after he hit the ground and both of those were weaker than his tree gobbles. In the meantime I had been hearing a group of multiple birds in a different direction and after it became clear that my targeted bird would not come to me, I elected to get up and make my way towards the group of birds I had been hearing in the distance. I had seen a group of five Jakes the night before walking in that direction, so I figured they were likely the ones I’d been hearing gobbling. But it also sounded like there might have been an older bird in the group.

As I began to make my way towards the group I had been hearing, I came to the outside edge of the Ponderosa pines and I figured I better stop and look around carefully before proceeding any further, because I had been calling and there was an outside chance that the birds I’d been hearing in the distance would come my way. I stopped and pulled out my binoculars to glass the open Ridgetop and to my surprise it looked like one of those western movies where the Indians are lined up across the Ridgetop on their horses before the attack. Except, instead of being Indians on the ridge, they were Turkeys. And one of the turkeys had its head up looking right at me, about 150 yds out. I was at least 10 yards from the nearest tree and the grass was only about ankle to mid-calf height. I knew my only chance was for them to not get spooked, and so I had to try to somehow melt into the grass. (I had pulled this off in NC on opening day, so I figured I might be able to hide in the grass this time also.) So, I slowly got down and laid on my back in the wet grass as flat as I could, with my feet towards the turkeys and my gun slung across my right shoulder. After I have been laying there for a couple minutes I raised my head a little bit to evaluate the situation, and the birds were slowly but steadily picking along coming my way. Apparently the one looking at me earlier had no idea what was up. So every couple minutes after that I would pick my head up a little bit and look again, and each time they were still getting closer going in a direct line through me to where I had been calling from. Soon I counted 10 different turkeys. As they got closer I could tell that they were probably all either hens or Jakes. When they got to about 60 yards I could see red heads and little beards on every one of them. But I didn’t want to spook them so I laid still hoping they would turn one way or another before they got too much closer. But I also knew that sometimes you can be fooled about the age of a bird by looking at only beards, so I figured I had to twirl my gun around and point it in their direction by my feet, instead of the opposite way. So I very slowly twirled it around on my chest like a baton without picking it up, and as I did that the birds started to putt. So I begin to call to them for the first time with high pitched clucks and some soft yelps to calm them. As soon as I did that they immediately approached to about 15 yards to see what I was. I raised my head one more time to make sure there were no mature birds in the group and I noticed that one of them seemed to have an awfully big chest with a little beard poking out. So I looked carefully and noticed his head and neck was awfully thick, and then when he turned sideways I could see positively that his wing speculum was that of a mature bird’s!

So I immediately raised my gun up and got the butt nestled into my shoulder, and of course when I did that they all began putting loudly and walking away. I was still flat on my back but did the best I could to put the bead on the head and neck of the mature, short-bearded bird. However a Jake stayed right between us in the way for quite a while, and I had to wait till they walked out about ten yards further and eventually separated, then took the shot.

To my relief, my aim was on, and the bird was flopping in the wet prairie grass, while the others were running off. He had beard rot to account for the short beard, with a beautiful buff tipped fan and rump.




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I took a few pictures and put the big bird in my vest to continue to hunt and scout for the rest of the morning. About an hour later I saw a group of five birds about a mile away on another prairie Ridgetop and decided I would walk that way to see if I could get any more action. It was hard to tell exactly where they were but when I arrived to the place I thought they were, I got a hen to yelp back to me but never I saw anything or heard any gobble.

In the meantime the Group of birds that my brother had hunted one the roost also flew down and walked away - so he never got a shot. We compared notes at lunchtime and came to believe that the five birds I had seen in the distance were probably the five birds he was set up on first thing.

We went back out in the afternoon, with my brother deciding to go to where I had last seen those five gobblers he set up on early in the morning, and I decided to go to the area where the bird I killed apparently have been roosting with those jakes. That area was a place where I had found birds roosting back in 2015, the last time I had hunted in Nebraska. I had also seen five jakes in that area close to roosting time the night before, so I figured I had decent chances to encounter some birds that afternoon.

After checking out the area a little bit, I decided to set up and call for the last three hours of the afternoon. I picked a high place somewhat hidden in young pines where I could see birds approaching from the Prairie, with the plan of calling sporadically.

I had been sitting there for almost the entire three hours, thinking I was going to have no action, when I saw four dark birds approaching. I got out my binoculars and saw that all four of them had swinging beards!

I didn’t dare call as long as they kept coming my way, which they did. Eventually, as they were coming into range, one of them saw me sitting there and let the world know he didn’t like it, with loud putting. And so I put a bead on the closest bird to me, pulled the trigger, and watched him flop. Two of the remaining birds flew off into the Pines, and the third tom had no idea what happened and ran right by me in the same direction on into the Pines.
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hawglips

Old Mossy Horns
So I had both of my tags filled the first day, and had three birds somewhere nearby that we could hunt the next morning since my brother found no action that afternoon.

After giving it a little thought, I came up with a plan for our approach in the dark the next morning. We’d had to start early since it was breaking light at 4:00.

Not too long after we got to where we wanted to listen, my brother did a cow moo, and provoked a gobble not much than 120 yds out, right where I hoped one of yesterday’s remains three might be. With some help from a bunch of crows, not one, but two birds were soon gobbling right there. Our plan was to treat them like a busted up flock of fall gobblers instead of using hen calls. Well, that didn’t work, as they flew down into an open area above us and ran off in a hurry in another direction. After they disappeared into the pines about 150 yds away, we moved up in that direction because The third surviving bird from the night before had now started gobbling, also up in that direction. Since I had killed a bird in 2015 right there, it seemed to me like a sound assumption to make that birds must like that particular area.

We got up there and set up quickly, and immediately heard a hen with a high pitched voice yelping from where we’d seen the first two gobblers enter the woods. So my brother called back to the hen trying to mimic her pitch, and she sure enough started heading our way. He hoped the gobblers had hooked up with the hen and that he would be so fortunate as to call her in with them in tow. In the meantime, the third bird was still gobbling across the field, answering my brother’s yelps, and getting closer.

Within two minutes of our first hearing the hen, here she came running right out in front of us from the woods to our left, paused for a couple seconds at 12 o’clock, and then continued running off to our right, yelping loudly. All of a sudden the two gobblers appeared, running behind her, right out to our front. They paused very briefly when they saw us, then took off full bore. But it was too late, my brother’s aim was true, and his tag was filled.
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hawglips

Old Mossy Horns
We celebrated, took some pictures, got back to the cabin, packed up, cleaned up, and got on the 12 hour road trip to Utah by 8:00 AM. Our hope was to get there before too late so we could get some sleep and hunt the next morning. I had a single Utah tag, and wanted to kill a Rio Grande turkey in order to complete a single season grand slam. My brother had already tagged out, and was acting as guide. He had very limited places to hunt that had pure Rio Grande turkeys, and the season was a little late for them since they typically stay at much lower altitude than the merriams I usually like to hunt in Utah.

The Achilles heel for Rio Grande Turkeys is that they seem to be more predictable about where they will roost. So, without the opportunity for scouting prior to my arrival, we decided to go to a place where they tended to roost in the same few trees, where there were multiple gobblers the week before. The problem with that spot was that everybody knows about it, and the hunting pressure is very heavy. The birds tend to fly down from the roost, avoiding any calling that they had heard, and disappear into the Russian olives that surround the roost, staying away from any intruders and any calling. In my brother’s words, “Those birds don’t act like normal turkeys.” So, our plan the first morning was to get to within 50 or 60 yards of the roost and try to call very softly to coax one down our way.

Well, that’s what we did, and the turkeys flew down behind scrub bushes safely away from us, called to us to tell us to come to them, then disappeared into the Russian olives. We tried to make a big flanking maneuver to get in front of them but with any calling that we did it was like we had a force field around us keeping them safely out away and heading off into another direction. It’s pretty much exactly as my brother predicted. Because that’s what they have been doing the entire season. We gave up about 10 o’clock, but hatched a plan for the next morning. Our plan was to cut a trail through the Russian olives to within 30 yards of the roost trees, so that we could slip in without making any noise, and sit where we thought they flew down the morning before, without making any calls and without being detected. So we picked the spot for the next morning, cut the trail so we could approach very quietly, and then headed off to area number two that had Rio Grande turkeys for me to hunt the rest of the day.

We secured permission to hunt the second area, which was a section of River bottom land that held a nice group of turkeys. The landowner told us where he had been seeing the birds so we went in that direction and soon located them in the field where he said he had seen them earlier that morning. So we slipped into the woods and began calling. In an hour or so, we saw turkeys heading our way - a hen with a gobbler in tow. The gobbler stayed in full strut, and was behind some bushes that prevented me from taking a shot. But he got into a small opening and I decided to pull the trigger. The bird rolled over, and got up and began running away. I jumped up to try to get another shot but he slipped off out of sight. Needless to say I was quite distraught, and looked to see what happened. I found that I had shot through some branches I did not realize were in my line of aim, and broke off three of them, enough to disrupt my pattern. Feeling sick, but running out of time and needing to make the most of the hours I had left to hunt, we went to the house to eat, so I could go back out that afternoon.

I went back out and made a blind in the area I’d seen birds move through that morning. I sat there till dark calling in 12 Jakes and some hens, but no gobblers. I roosted one so that we would have an option for the next morning. I also got some video of deer that came right up close to me, with one almost stepping on my leg before he realized I was there.
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hawglips

Old Mossy Horns
Now I had only one more day to hunt. So I elected to go for the very high risk option of moving in extremely close to the roost tree we hunted the morning before. And if we could not kill anything at fly down time I would go back to the river bottom property and hunt the remainder of the day in the blind I constructed the afternoon before.

So the next morning we walked down through the path we cut the day before and quietly and successfully moved in to the exact spot we picked to sit down in, without being detected. The birds had already started gobbling and we found ourselves to be approximately 25 yards from the closest bird, who could not see us, with another one about 35 yards away, with a very clear View of our location. 1000 things could go wrong, any one of which would cause our hunt to end quickly in a bust. There were hens roosted with the gobblers, and if one of them flew down first, she’d putt at us, and the gig would be up. A gobbler had to fly down first in order for me to get a shot. And he would have to fly down within range, because the first bird that landed would immediately see us, and if I had no shot, the gig would be up. And if I had a shot, I’d have to accurately touch it off very quickly at a spooked bird. And all the time we sat there before fly down we had to avoid detection by the bird that could see us so clearly while he was on the limb. There were also a lot of ravens roosting in and around those trees, and if one of them saw us and issued an alarm call, the gig would likely be up. We needed an awful lot of luck in addition to flawless execution.

It began getting light enough at 5:25 to prevent us from moving anything as much as a finger. I was extremely nervous about the bird that could see us clearly - with nothing but air between his eyeballs and us. But as good luck would have it, every time he began to crane his neck looking more carefully at us, a pesky raven would hop closer on his limb or otherwise try to annoy him. It was a bit comical, and very welcome. So that gobbler was totally distracted by the raven, preventing him from paying us as much attention as he might normally do. That raven also accomplished something else. He made that particular gobbler want to leave the limb and get on the ground as quickly as possible. In the meantime the closest roosted gobbler, who had a very deep voice, was constantly strutting and drumming, causing me to hope he would fly down first - as I imagined he was the dominant bird and an old one with long spurs.

So, we sat there under the olives in the wide open, completely still from 5:25 till the bird who had a clear view of us and was being harassed by the raven began to lean over at 6:03 and started his departure from the limb onto the ground. I had not moved my eyes from off of him for more than a few seconds at a time, and when he began to lean down for his descent, I clicked off my safety and began to put the gun on him. As soon as he landed about 12 yds away he saw me and started running. But I was locked onto his mid-upper back, and within two steps I pulled the trigger- then the trees erupted with flying turkeys. But the bird I shot didn’t twitch.

I don’t believe I have ever successfully executed such a high-risk, low-probability plan while turkey hunting. Everything uncharacteristically broke in our favor, so we thanked the Lord profusely. The Tom should have seen me enough to avoid us. But a raven annoyed and distracted him so that he didn’t become alerted to our position. If a hen had flown down first she’d have seen us and alerted everyone to us and the Toms would have avoided us. But the raven-annoyed Tom was anxious to get on the ground and flew down first. Had a bird in the tree seen or heard us during our ultra-close approach, we’d have been busted. So many potential deal-breakers factored in, but none materialized.
 
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QuietButDeadly

Old Mossy Horns
Contributor
Thanks for the tag along Hal. Have experienced the same force field phenomenon, go the opposite way with Rios many times, especially with henned up birds. Woodsmanship, stealth and patience are more important than calls except for the times when calls work great and they come in running. You just never know with them so you better have a plan B and C and D..................

Congrats on a mighty fine trip!
 

hawglips

Old Mossy Horns
For those who are interested in such things, here's a couple tips on identification that might come in handy some time.

Look, at the hero pictures with my brother and I posing with the turkeys, in post #2 vs post #5. Look at the obvious difference in fan feather lengths. Feather length in the fan and rump is a morphological characteristic for identification between those two subspecies. The merriams in #2 is significantly longer than the rio in #5. Whether the rio is big or small, his fan feather lengths are pretty much always shorter than the merriams. Fan and fan covert tip color is not a reliable indication, as both subspecies' color can vary a lot.

Here they are again, for easier comparison:

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hawglips

Old Mossy Horns
The second tip is more practically useful in the heat of battle - identifying mature bird vs juvenile by the wing speculum (secondary coverts). Knowing how to use that field marking made the difference between me killing that first bird in NE, or not.

This field mark is not well known even among serious turkey hunters. I have a buddy who kills around 20 birds a year who passed on birds whose beards were wet and stuck against their chest because he thought they were jakes. Had he ID'ed the speculum as an adult, he'd have shot one. It's a handy technique.

A bird in his 2nd summer will moult in his adult feathers. The moulting starts in late spring usually. So by his second fall, a bird has all his adult feathers. The speculum feathers are much longer in an adult bird than a juvenile.

Look at the wing speculum of the two birds in my last post. Then compare them with the wing speculum of these jake's....

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Here's a fall jenny....
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Here was a deceptively full-fanned jake - look at his wing speculum which has started moulting and you can see a few longer feathers growing in...
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hawglips

Old Mossy Horns
Here are two Utah birds showing the same obvious fan feather length difference (from 2000 and 2001)....

Merriams
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Rio
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One other key difference is the length of the light tips of both the fan and the rump. Almost always, the merriams has longer light-colored tips on their fan and rump feathers than a rio. You can also see that difference in the examples of post 11 and 12, along with the pictures in this post.
 

Datrip

Six Pointer
Thanks Hal for the write-up & pics, felt like I was sitting right beside of you. And thank you for the tips. After reading the tips about the fan feather lengths, I went and look at my Rios and Merriams and you are spot on. Good info right there.
 
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