I certainly don’t consider myself an “expert” turkey hunter. There are people who’ve been chasing and studying these birds for a lifetime, and I’d love to have half the knowledge they’ve amassed. Heck, I’d be happy with a quarter of their experience.
But I have managed to learn a little bit when it comes to turkey hunting… which is a good thing because nowadays I guide other hunters. I guess they expect some level of expertise, and I try hard not to disappoint. My hunter down at Bryson Resort this weekend certainly wasn’t disappointed… unless he was expecting a textbook, TV hunt experience. Fortunately, he understood that those TV hunts are just that… television. Real hunting demands adaptability.
Things started out promising enough. On Friday evening we did a little scouting, and set a pop-up blind downhill from a good roost. As we were putting everything in place, the birds were gobbling up on the ridgetop, a couple hundred yards away. Come sunrise, I fully expected the birds to follow their normal ritual and fly down to work along the open hillside just past the blind. Given the consistency these birds had shown, I honestly expected to be done with a bird in the bag by 0830. It was going to be almost too easy.
I’m not the first to say it, and this isn’t the first time I’ve repeated it… but if you wanna make God laugh, just tell him your plans!
Sunrise came and I started out by flapping an old turkey wing against the ground of the blind. Larry, my hunter, yelped a few times on his box call. Within seconds, I heard an angry cluck from the hill behind the blind. The cluck became a series of fighting purrs, yelps, and cackles as the hen was obviously quite agitated with our decoy. “Cutting in on my men,” she seemed to scold. “I’ll whup your feathered butt!”
This was promising, as I was sure the gobblers would be right there with her. But there was no gobbling. We sat still, hoping she’d lead an unsuspecting tom right by the blind, but it never happened. In fact, even the hen never showed herself. At one point, we could tell she was less than 10 yards behind us, but she stayed in our blind spot until she finally tired of her tirade and putted away into the canyon.
A few minutes later we heard a gobble across the hillside. Larry responded with a couple of yelps from his box call, and the tom immediately gobbled back. We spotted the bird on the edge of the distant ridge, pacing back and forth like he wanted to come in. Another tom joined him, but while they wandered up and down and gobbled their heads off, they wouldn’t come any closer.
I pulled out a slate and my mouthcall, and between the two of us we sang a love song that would’ve made Barry Manilow proud… if he had been a turkey. (Actually, I’ll take turkey music over Mandy any old day.) A hen popped up beside the toms, starting jealously toward our decoy, but nothing moved those birds in our direction. Another hen popped up, and we realized that we were fighting a tough battle against fairly overwhelming odds. A moment later, the little group turned and disappeared down into the canyon.
That was as close to a “classic” turkey hunt as we’d get. The rest of the morning brought us distant gobbles, but the birds simply didn’t want to work with us. Instead they held to cover, moving in the chemise and oaks, acting more like deer or pigs than like turkeys. It was a beautiful day, not too hot or cold and a beautiful sun-drenched morning… but there was almost no sign of strutting or courtship.
What to do? Well, maybe it wasn’t the traditional idea, but if the turkeys wanted to act like deer, we’d hunt them like deer. Get up high, glass, and move on the birds when we’d find them. We could stalk the edges of the brush, moving slow and scanning constantly with the binoculars.
Unlike deer, though, turkeys gobble, and that proved to be the undoing of one big tom.
Larry and I had just parked the truck, and we were easing back up the hill to look back toward our blind. We were, honestly, still formulating a plan for the rest of the day and didn’t even bother to bring Larry’s gun or any calls from the truck. We’d glass the valley, and figure out where to set the blind for the afternoon hunt.
Well, that was the idea, anyway.
As we were easing up the hill, a group of toms suddenly began to gobble from the canyon a few hundred yards away. Then, less than fifty yards behind us, on the other side of the truck, a single tom gobbled back. The echoes had scarcely died off before I had Larry running back to the truck. I grabbed his gun case and tossed it back to him. He loaded up and slid under the low branches of a scrub oak. I popped my mouth call in and gave a few gentle clucks. The tom didn’t answer. “Let’s move on him,” I suggested. “We’ll ease up the hill. You go first, and if he steps out, smack him!”
We crept to the hill, and as we topped it I heard the telltale, “putt”. Larry blocked part of my view, but I caught the red head craning over the grass to see who was interloping on his territory. I caught a quick glimpse of some beard, but it looked like a jake. I started to say something when the bird turned a bit more and I saw the entire beard. “Take him,” I said, unnecessarily as Larry’s shotgun roared and the bird went down hard. 
The bird sported a nine-inch beard, and spurs in the area of 3/4″. We figured him to be a two-year-old, nothing that would make the record books, but Larry was pretty happy with him. Even more impressive was what we found when we picked the bird up. I estimated him at15 pounds, but when Larry handed him to me, my estimate jumped up by five. Back at the resort, we put the bird on the scale. 21 1/2 pounds of Merriam’s turkey! That’s a hefty bird!
Plenty of time left in the CA turkey season. If you haven’t got your bird yet, this is a good time to start. If you’re looking for a guided hunt, give Deedy a call at Bryson Hesperia Resort.