Young County, Two out of three ain't bad.

Went to the Lease early and roosted birds both Thursday and Friday evening. Thursday was a nice day with lots of Gobblers bunched up. Some of the most vocal birds I have ever encountered. Both hens yelping and toms gobbling. I crawled through the mesquites following them to the edge of a wheat field both evenings. Friday evening there was only one Jake with them and it was persistent. It kept getting beat up by the Toms. To stay away from them the poor thing had to keep running in circles until it roosted. Very fun to watch. But it set my plan for the next morning with one Jake decoy and two hens.




Saturday morning I was set up less than 100 yards from the Roost trees, but encountered the same wind and cold as everyone else did. Wind was much worse than forcasted. Dash is now my 2nd Vizsla to Turkey hunt with me. Same as I used to do with Blaze. His job is just to hang back and low in case I need to send him as catch dog. He did very well staying still and quiet considering the cold wind. Unfortunately it looked like the wind drove some birds off roost before sunup. 6 hens and one big Gobbler came off roost still almost too dark to see. Completely silent and out of range the hens walked away single file with the Tom close behind. Completely ignored my decoys and my calling. I called it

Sunday morning was nice. The Tom and six hens roosted in the same tree, with the others gobbling in trees nearby. I have old original Eddie Salter made one sided box calls that I replaced the cherry sound boards with rosewood cut from guitar wood and they are very loud. One high pitched and one raspy sounding. I opened up with the high one in an aggressive fly down cackle and had gobblers to my South, West, and North Answer me. Only my one big Tom with the 6 hens visible. Again they started out across the field away from me, so I threw out another fly down cackle which got one hen to notice me and break from the rest. The Tom started to follow, but suddenly a Cow went for the hen and flew her off. My birds left the field and Cows converged on my decoys. I ran them off with hot shot cattle prod noises and kept calling with yelps and purrs now and then. Finally the same Tom came back. He ran right by the hens and went for the Jake decoy. It fell dead still so I put the shotgun down, then it tried to get up. Dash tackled it.




I roosted another bird yesterday evening deep in the creek bottoms. I set up on it this morning and it seemed like we called back and forth for an hour, but then it started getting farther away. I stuck with it a long time, but finally gave up on it and moved to look at the area it had been. Yep, less than 100 yards away it was still there, just silent now, I busted it and a hen as I walked up on it through the trees. One moving away was different bird.

Never seen a turkey hunting dog, very cool! Congrats on a nice bird!

Awesome. Forrest

Very nice

Great story, as usual, Sniper John. You and Dash make a great team.

For the gearheads...shotgun, choke, ammunition, range?

That is a beautiful hound.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

Ithaca Mag 10 with a Deerslayer barrel which is short and has open sights. Ammo was Federal 10GA "High Velocity Heavyweight Turkey" 2 oz #7 shot. It uses a "flitecontrol" Wad and shot is "35% denser than lead". I patterned the ammo last week and easily gives a killing pattern on a turkey head at 50 yards and probably will much farther than that, but the ammo is expensive so I stopped there. Turkey was shot at maybe 35 yards give or take and initially fell dead or so I thought. I was surprised when it got back up. It probably would have just flopped around, but Dash is there just in case. I started using my other Vizsla a several years ago after I had a couple Turkeys run off and then saw a TV hunting show that same year where someone was using a Lab as a catch dog sitting with them turkey hunting. Note it is not legal in a number of States to use a dog and not legal in Texas on public land.

Awesome!

I want to take my pudelpointer, I know another guy that turkey hunts with his (SheCrappieKilla). Would be a blast, but I can't get out there for a couple more weeks.

Good pictures and story. Thanks for sharing.

Congrats!