WOW! Is all I can say!  The hunting on Saturday morning was as good as it gets!  Robert Graham, Bob Karel from Jacksonville and Paul Arguelles from Smut Eye, Alabama made the trek to Immokalee, Florida for the opening of the south zone spring turkey season.  This was my seventh year hunting with Stacey Howell and the first without my youngest son Kyle.  He thought it would be a better idea to take the boat and a bunch of college buddies and go fishing in Key West for spring break.  We arrived just after lunch on Friday and went straight to the groves to meet Stacey.  We spent the next several hours scouting some of the most remarkable wildlife habitat I have ever been in.  We saw deer, hogs, assorted fowl and yes some Osceola turkeys.  We found an oak hammock for Robert to hunt.  He set up a small blind and we vacated the area.  There was turkey sign all over.  We drove another mile or so to another oak hammock surrounded by dry ponds and cow pastures.  There was an opening in the hammock that bisected it giving access to the pastures from the east and the west.  I decided to set up on the opening tucked back under a short cabbage palm that had a lot of low hanging fronds.  It was surrounded by thick ground cover and provided an awesome set up if the birds came in either direction.  Bob had already found a place to hunt in a dry pond and we helped Paul get familiar with an area that Kyle and I had some previous success.  We checked into world famous Motel 82 and carried on our traditional happy hour hosted by Bob and went to the Seminole Indian casino for dinner.  We were back in the room by 9:00pm and ready to face the challenges of the 2009 turkey season.

We were up at 4:30am and left the motel for the ten-minute drive to the groves at 5:00am.  Bob wanted to be early! It was a very cool 50° and grabbed a light jacket, something I have never had to do before.  I was set up in my area after Stacey dropped me off and I made my way across the pasture by 6:00am.  The moon had already set, there was no breeze and it was very still and very quiet.  I set my Delta hen decoy to the east about 25 yards in front of me on the left hand side of the opening that bisected the hammock.  I placed another decoy to my right so it could be seen from the west pasture.  Now all I could do was wait.

At 6:15 the woods started to wake up.  Owls were hooting in the hammock and from surrounding hammocks and the crows started there morning screeching.  The first gobble was at 6:20am responding to a hawk’s loud call.  The birds went CRAZY! There were at least five male turkeys gobbling non-stop in the tree and on the ground for the next hour.  They responded to every call from live hens and to my calling.  I started a conversation with an excited hen still in the tree.  She flew from tree to tree and ended up directly on top of my decoy very agitated by my calling.  Our conversation had the gobblers so fired up I just knew I would be facing at a flock of longbeards at any moment as she flew down about twenty yards to the east of the decoy in front of me and spent the next 15-20 minutes pacing between my decoys yelping and clucking.  She called two jakes and they milled around and would not leave.  At one point the hen walked over and was less than three feet from me.  Another hen showed up from the west pasture and the two hens and jakes finally left about 7:45 am without drawing a mature bird in.  I was somewhat shocked that all of that live excited calling did not draw a big bird in.  The birds out in the pasture to the east were still gobbling.  They were 200 yards away, I guessed, but would still respond to my yelps, clucks and purring.  I mean soft purring.  Their hearing is incredible!

I was in a great spot and decided to sit tight and not try to “run and gun” after the flock.  I heard the last gobble about 8:00 am.  I waited until 8:15 and ran a series of yelps on my Halloran slate.  These pot calls are the best I have ever used or heard.  I reached over to grab my striker and was just about to run another series of yelps at 8:30 when I heard a cluck.  I looked up and saw a jake heading toward my decoy.  I saw a second red head coming into the opening and got the gun up only to see jake number two.  It was what I heard next that sent the hair on my neck standing.  The sound of drumming from a bird in full strut!  It only took a few seconds for a mature tom to parade up the opening.  He never broke strut.  I let him walk five steps from the decoy and he quarter turned and faced me.  I rolled him up at thirty steps with a hot load of #6 in his strutting face!  He only had one spur but it was an impressive 1.5” and he had a 10” beard.  What a rush! Turkey season 2009 has begun with a hunt burned forever into my memory.  Bob and Robert were successful as well, taking mature birds that morning.  Paul harvested a great bird (his first Osceola) at 4:30 pm that afternoon. 

This is truly Livin the Hunt Life.

Major