A Monument to Trial and Error…Mostly Error

From an outside perspective, one jake and a legitimate limb-hanging tom make for a good turkey season. But at this point in my turkey hunting career, outside views don’t matter too much. I hunt for my own reasons, as well as for others. Which makes this spring all the more painful. Among several other failures and an eye injury, poor decisions cost me and Peter a chance at what would have been our first ever “1-2-3 boom” opportunity at two strutters in seven years of hunting

Painful lessons:

-If two toms come 300 yards across a field, but then briefly go 50 yards in the other direction (and you’re confident that you’re between the turkeys and their roost trees): STAY PUT!

-Guessing zig will guarantee the turkey will zag 7 out of 8 times (the 8th time got me the limb hanger, but it was humiliations galore otherwise).

-If your hunting buddy says, “Watch where that turkey goes into the woods” the night before, SET UP EXACTLY IN THAT SPOT, especially if the birds have been decoy shy.

-If you have two spots to set up in the morning, pick the the other one.

-With two people to cover a large field, the best tactic is to have one person at each corner.

-Noseeums and black flies eat DEET for breakfast. Bring mosquito netting on late-season hunts.

-Turkeys only become apparent after 121 minutes…you will spent 120 minutes being drilled like a BP oil rig before you can’t stand the bugs any more and finally stand up to stretch. When you do stretch, DON’T WALK WHERE THE TURKEYS CAN SEE YOU.

I could go on, but it’s still too painful.