Georgia Turkey "On the Ground"

Turkey season in Georgia has started, and the first few days have been pretty good. This article relates our hunting efforts for the first 4 days. Video footage is soon to follow.

The opening morning (Saturday) I hunted with Farrell Landrum.....we began morning on a hardwood ridge with birds gobbling very near.... right at daylight. There were several birds, and we saw a couple fly down.

Early, we heard some birds working towards our position, but no gobbling. Soon, 3 birds showed up, a 2 year old tom and two hens. These birds walked right to us and to our decoys. We got some low qual footage. Farrell decided to shoot the tom, but the bird had already left our decoy area. I got the shot on film, but we did not get our bird. 

After the shot, we looked for the bird. Then decided to hunt longer at the same spot as we could still hear more birds nearby. Sure enough, 3 more birds came to our location....3 young jakes, w/ 1 inch beards. These birds too walked right to our decoy setup. We did get a few minutes of high quality footage of these birds, but passed on shooting the youngsters.

Saturday afternoon, hunting alone on our turkey food plots, I setup a hen decoy and got in the blind. After only about 20 minutes of light calling, , clucks and purring, I heard birds walking towards my position. Over my left shoulder, 2 toms were looking into the food plot, but  they would not come in. I did get a few seconds of low qual footage, as I was using the gun cam only. The birds walked parallel to my position, all along I was thinking they were going to work into the food plot. They did not, and walked off.

I did get to listen to several birds roost in the area at dark, though none would answer my owl calls.

Sunday morning, Farrell and I started out at the same food plot from above, and heard several different gobblers, but when the hens started, the toms hushed and flew down walking away with the hens. We decided to walk and call.

About 10:15am, we caught up with a strutting tom in the creek bottom, across the creek. We saw him first at about 70 yards, in full strut. We dropped down in the mud and tried to work out a plan. First we tried to just call him towards our spot......he only needed to further his approach by about 25 yards in order to be close enough for a shot (he had to come to the far creek bank). He would strut but not  budge. He did GOBBLE a couple of times. But, when we heard a hen cluck, the bird came out of strut and disappeared.

I knew they were headed to a big wheat field above the creek, so we decided to go farther up stream and cross over to get ahead of them in he field. Turns out we over shot him by 200 yards. He went to the field for sure, but only a little ways in....to strut and keep close to the hen. We thought we should move closer, so back to the creek we went, and came back to the field closer to the bird.....not close enough.  we did get the hen to yelp back to us, but the gobbler still strutted, and would not leave her. I thought we should put a move on the tom, but when I tried to sneak close enough, we found out that he had another 4 or 5 hens with him that we had neither seen nor heard. Busted!

Monday afternoon, I setup in the bend in the road between 2 food plots, set up a decoy and began calling. Not too long after, here came 2 hens, right to my set up. The lead hen walked to about 15yards from the decoy, then walked to my right, around my blind. If she recognized me as a threat, she never spooked, but rather gave a few soft yelps and fed off thru some planted pines. I never saw what happened to the other hen

 Later, I heard footsteps, turning around I saw a nice whitetail doe. Turns out there were 4 deer, and they were enamered with the decoy, bobbing their heads up and down at the decoy, and perking up when I would strike out a yelp on my slate call. No gobblers appeared and I only heard a couple birds fly up to roost. Oddly, I thought I heard one fly up in the planted pines.

Tuesday, March 24th, started with nothing. I heard several owls but no gobbles. I even used an owl call a couple of times but got no response. This hunt took place where the gobbler above, 3-22 was found strutting in the creek bottom. With no response, knowing I was hunting in the preferred strut zone of a gobbler, I picked a large tree and set up shop. I put up the stake blind and set out a hen decoy. Layed out a few calls and got ready. Shortly I used a Primos "Many Beards" triple reed call and gave a few clucks, then some light cutting. Two different gobblers sounded off in the creek, on much closer than the other. After only a couple rounds, he gobbled much closer.

Soon I saw the tom circling to my right, thru the timber and palmetto bushes. At about 

30 yards he went behind some brush and I was able to turn to the right and line of the shot. When the bird came from behind the trees, he only moved a couple steps and stopped again. BANG! 

I am really proud of this bird....it was my first tom that I called in myself...using a mouth call too.

Video to be posted soon!

Thanks for hunting with us for a couple days! Please come back and catch up with us as we are seriously chasing birds over the next several days.

Jeff

Hunting our Heritage One Memory at a Time