Not the case on this trip!!
I left home at 3:30 Friday morning, and got out there in time to catch up with my dad, who was already there, and to meet up with a landowner who had given us permission to hunt his properties on Saturday and Sunday. He showed us three different properties that he said the turkeys were thick on, and showed us exactly where we should set up on each one. None of which made a lick of sense to me. The landscape was wide open rolling prairie with waist high sage grass and deep slightly wooded drainages. The trees were sparse with low, gnarly, wind twisted limbs. Not the roosting areas I am accustomed to seeing! The approach to any of these possible roosting areas was noisy and wide open with no way not to silhouette yourself against miles and miles of horizon. We hunted these areas as best we could on Saturday without so much as laying eyes on a hen until late evening when we glassed a gobbler and five hens hiding from the wind in a deep dry pond bed. The wind at this point had increased from a sustained 20 mph to a sustained 45 mph with wicked gusts. As we glassed these birds they started to move, and we spotted a draw that we felt certain they would head for to stay out of the wind all the way to the roost. I decided that I could head them off so my dad drove me to the other end of the field and dropped me off. With jake fan in one hand and gun in the other I hustled to the pond levee and crawled up the back side of it. When I reached the top I peeked over, hiding behind the jake fan, to see where the birds were. In classic turkey style they had gone the complete opposite direction and had gained 400 yards on me, uphill. I called a little and they looked back a time or two but never checked up. Having watched those yahoos on youtube stalking turkeys and shooting them at point blank range I decided if they could do it...so could I! I started by making my jake fan strut back and forth across the pond levee and doing my best to gobble with my diaphragm. It got his attention! He started strutting. He would turn to face me and stomp his feet and put on a big show, but he wouldn't leave his hens so I moved a little closer and gobbled louder and more aggressively. He continued to strut and started gobbling back. I could see him stretch his neck out as far as it would go but could never hear him due to the high wind and the distance which was still increasing. They were about to crest the hill at this point so I decided it was time for the full court press. I duck walked, with jake fan over my face, as fast as I could for the remaining 300ish yards gobbling as hard as I could all the way. I had lost sight of them by this point, and when I got to where I thought I should be able to see them again, and also be in gun range, they were no where in sight. I thought they had beaten me over the top of the hill and were gone, so, disgusted, out of breath, and with my thighs on fire I started making my way toward the truck. I had only taken a few steps when I caught movement in the grass to my left. A hen jumped and flew, then another, and another. Three, four, five hens flew, but no gobbler. I couldn't imagine where he was. Then he couldn't take it any longer, and he broke from his hiding spot in the tall grass about 65 yards away and started running. Two magnum blends pounded the Browning Citori butt stock into my shoulder and both were clean misses. A sixth hen that I hadn't seen prior to this point jumped and flew and fired the awfullest stream of turkey poo you've ever seen in my direction to signify their victory and general disgust. When I stumbled back to the truck at the top of the hill where my dad had watch the whole fiasco I found him doubled over laughing at my efforts!
The wind continued to rise until we were in a full blown dust storm. I took this picture when visibility was at about a half mile and it quickly deteriorated to about 300 yards.
Sunday morning the wind was still howling and blowing dirt and sand so furiously that the inside of the truck was covered in a layer of dust and grit. Knowing we would never locate any turkeys robbed by the wind of our hearing we headed for a field on public land that my dad had glassed a bird or two in the day prior to my arrival. We made our way through the field before daylight and found a semi-quiet spot on the leeward side of a large rock where we set up and hoped for the best. Just as the sun started to rise the wind laid momentarily, just long enough for me make a loud fly-down cackle. My dad swore he heard a gobble immediately. Within 10 minutes he started throwing sticks at me and pointing toward the end of the field. Sure enough, at about 250 yards, there were five hens entering the field followed by a mature gobbler and a bird I'm guessing was a two year old whose beard wasn't yet showing through his feathers as they ran in full strut toward our decoys. The hens followed closely, and were instantly on high alert when they got to the wind blown decoys. The gobblers strutted around my jake decoy for no more than 30 seconds as I waited for things to get right for both of us to be able to shoot. Since my dad was on the left and I was on the right, in true sportsman fashion, he was supposed to shoot the bird to the left and I was supposed to take the one to the right which happened to be the younger bird. And, because he is a considerably better shooter than I am I was supposed to shoot first and he would follow my lead. As the long seconds ticked off and the birds got more nervous I could see that he was struggling to line up a shot because of a couple small trees near the muzzle of his gun. About that time a hen putted, the gobblers broke strut and began to run, my dad's bird stepped in front of my gun, and the rest is history.
We stuck around the rest of the morning and afternoon trying to fill our remaining tags, but as the winds continued to increase to near 60 mph we decided it was time to throw in the towel. As we pulled onto the highway to end our adventure we came across what may be the most interesting road kill I have ever encountered, and, since we were in the middle of the prairie miles and miles from more than a thimble full of water, we can only attribute it to the merciless wind.
