Mike Bard Turkey Journal 2008

For the past 16 years, I’ve chased ducks and geese around the Northeast and I’ve even started to venture around the country the past few years in pursuit of waterfowl. My focus on waterfowl keeps me busy year round, from working with my retriever, finding new locations, obtaining permission, attending shows to hunting. My one track mind has kept me sheltered from other outdoor pursuits, such as hunting spring turkeys. This year I have decided that since Zink Calls^® was expanding their world from waterfowl calls to include turkey calls, I’d try to expand mine too and decided to chase spring turkeys in my home state of New York.

Here in New York, our spring turkey season doesn’t open until May 1^st and then runs until May 31^st. You are allowed two bearded turkeys per spring season. At this point, I had two months to learn as much as I could about hunting turkeys.

I started out by asking my waterfowl buddies, who also hunt turkeys. All of them were great and not only supplied me with some great information, but many offered to bring me along on a hunt come May, so I began to not only pick up some valuable information, but also plan a couple hunts. My next step was searching the Internet for info, where again, I was able to find some more good information on various websites, such as the NWTF’s website and various discussion forums.

As April arrived, I found myself still very uncertain and still searching for information from anyone who would share it. At this point, I had learned that spring turkey hunting was in many ways like hunting deer during the rut and absolutely nothing like waterfowl hunting. Another task that had to be addressed was convincing my wife, who already allows me to chase waterfowl from September through March to now allow me to, spend the month of May hunting. My wife gave me the okay, so next on the list was getting some gear.

My family takes an annual spring vacation and this year’s trip took us past a Cabelas (odd how that just happened), where I was faced with the task of selecting decoys. There are a ton of different brands and types of turkey decoys to choose from, so I tried to look over most and then selected a jake and a hen combo that to me looked the most like turkeys. I didn’t find a turkey vest that I liked there, so I reviewed several on the Internet and ordered one to be delivered to my house. I was able to get my hands on a couple of Zink’s new diaphragm calls to use and a local turkey hunter gave me one of his home made box calls to try. Having never used a diaphragm call, it may take me until next spring to become competent with though.

So with my gear in hand, I needed to find some turkeys and get permission in a few places. I started out looking in fields that I have permission to goose hunt in, but I really didn’t see much except for a few pair of resident geese feeding and the occasional deer passing though. I did find a few toms mid-April, but it seems I chose to start looking for turkey hunting permission a little late and that particular farm was already spoken for.

The last few days of April, I spent each morning before work watching areas I had permission on, but really nothing too much was going on with turkeys. On my way home from work each evening, I took some back roads to again watch turkeys…there are several in this part of New York, but getting access to them this close to the start of the season wasn’t possible.

At last, the season had arrived! My first morning out, I went alone and to a piece of woods close to my house, as I could only hunt a couple hours prior to having to go to work. There were no gobbles heard and only one lonely hen answering me from time to time off in the distance. I did enjoy my time in the woods, as several pairs of mallards and wood ducks moved back and forth from a nearby lake to a swamp farther back in the woods.

During the first weekend of the season, my good friend, Rick Murphy, invited me to come out with him, as he had already tagged out for the season. Rick is a very successful turkey hunter and I learned a lot of little tips from him on our hunt. We started out right on the birds and had one gobbling for about an hour, but he just wouldn’t come down to us. We did a lot of “running and gunning” attempts throughout the morning that put us on or near 3 more toms and 4 more jakes, but it just wasn’t in the cards for us that morning.

For the second week of the season, I took up an offer from Dave Rearick and Erik Nilsson, to spend a couple days in Pennsylvania with them, as they had both tagged out for the season and still had several turkeys around. They had both put a lot of scouting time in and it really paid off on our first morning. We had several jakes and hens fly down into a pasture where he had set up. After about an hour, we were surrounded with four jakes out in front of us and several others working their way up the hillside with their hens towards us. I picked out the largest jake in front and focused on him, awaiting him to come into range. We then heard a hen approaching us from the rear and thought she was going to blow our cover. I peered over and noticed a tom with her, then noticed the four jakes out front had started a dead sprint right at us. Erik told me to swing on the tom, so I did, but shot over him in my haste. He, a second tom who was also coming up behind us, all the jakes and the hens scattered and I knew I had just blown the best chance I may ever get at a nice tom. I felt really bad because of all the work Dave and Erik had put into scouting and I was ready to call it quits for the day, but Erik gave me some line about how it happens and we had several more spots to try, so off we went to the next farm.

The second farm we went to already had turkeys in the field and Dave had mentioned that several hunters had been hunting here for the past three weeks, so these birds may be tough. We slide in on the backside of the field and cut down along the woods trying to get ahead of the birds. As we approached the corner of the first field, we met up with 3 toms who were about one hundred yards away, so we quickly hid on the edge of the woods and tried calling them in. All three were interested, but hung up about 60 yards out where the wheat was taller. We couldn’t get them to walk through the wheat and after a few minutes, they moved off into the next field down, however before we could move again, several jakes ran to the spot the toms had been strutting in and also began to strut and face off with each other. Like the toms, the jakes didn’t want to go though the taller wheat either and after a few minutes of not seeing a decoy and just hearing our calls, they followed the path of the toms into the next field. At this point we decided to cut down into the woods and again tried to get in front of them. We went as far as we could, as fast as we could, then came back up to the edge of a field where a steep hill in the field obstructed our view. Dave whispered to me to get set here and that I may only get to see their heads as they approached. No sooner did he say that, when the heads of the three toms popped up over the hill. Dave and Erik weren’t set yet and didn’t see them, but they saw us, as they’re heads all popped up even further. The lead bird then jumped into the air and without thinking, I immediately shot him. At 9:30 am on my first day, I had my first turkey and my PA turkey hunt was over. We had worked 19 toms or jakes this morning between the two farms we hunted. My first turkey weighed 21 pounds, had a 9.5 inch beard and 1 1/8 inch spurs. He scored 62.5 on the NWTF’s scoring system.

With almost two full days left in PA with my friends, we decided to visit Cabelas and do some trout fishing. Now that I’m hooked, I made good use of this unexpected visit to Cabelas and stocked up on some close out turkey supplies. Oddly, since I got my first bird, there has been far more talk of the bird I missed, than the bird I got, but I guess that’s just the way it goes with the friends I hunt with. Erik and Dave…Thanks!!!

©David Rearick, Game Hogg Hunt Club

Week three of the season back in New York was relatively uneventful on the turkey front. Several days of rain washed out my plans for hunting the weekend and with wet and cool weather I have struggled to even see any birds scouting. I did manage to mount my first turkey tail and beard using a mounting kit that I purchased while at Cabelas last week.

With two weeks left in the season and Dave Rearick and Erik Nilsson planning to come up the following weekend, I decided to put additional efforts into finding new locations and new birds prior to work and a couple evenings versus hitting the same couple spots I had been with no luck. I had found signs of birds on a couple new spots, however at this point of the season and the week’s cool and rainy temps, they were all being very quiet.

During Dave and Erik’s drive up, Dave received a call from Zink Calls, Z-Unit member, Mark Hoke, who was looking to pick up a couple more hunts on video on the season, so Dave invited him to tag along with us for the weekend. It was 1 am Saturday by the time everyone had made it to my house. We all caught a quick nap and headed out in the morning. We decided to split up to increase our odds and Dave hit a piece of state land that I had heard a few gobbles on alone, while the rest of us hit a friend of mine’s property. We had a group birds gobbling on the roost and they continued to gobble for over an hour, however they moved away from us and off of the property we had permission to hunt. As we were coming up with a new game plan, we ran into the land owner out checking on his fields and he informed us of seeing a nice Tom a couple fields over. We decided to try and head him off, guessing where he was headed. Our guess was right on, as we came up over a hill near the area we thought he’d be, we nearly ran right into him and bumped him off. With no luck there, we picked Dave up and hit a couple other spots until noon with no luck.

Sunday, we all headed to Rick Murphy’s area and met up with Rick and his dad, who had offered to take us out. We split into two groups and hit several spots throughout the morning. My group worked a couple birds and had hens walking 10 yards away from us throughout the morning’s hunt, but we never had a shot. Mr. Murphy managed a nice Tom, while hunting with the other group.

The last week was busy with Memorial Day, pole barn plans and work, so I only managed to get back out a couple times with only sounds of far off gobblers to show for it.

I’d have to call my first season a success, as with the help of my friends, I managed to take a nice bird. It’s not as fun at waterfowling, but it’s a nice way to spend your time in May here in NY and PA. I’ll be back at it next Spring with the goal of harvesting a turkey on my own.

Thanks for following my journey though my rookie season.