Even in the dark, looking through the kitchen window as we ate breakfast rolls and drank coffee, it was obvious that it snowed during the night. And as Collin Cottrell and I trudged up the hill to our blind by the gate we felt the bite of the cold wind that dropped the wind chill to a bone chilling 10 degrees. Soon gobbles rang out from the fields and woods below us but; as time passed, the only turkeys that braved the high winds on our hill were us.
After two hours of no-turkey action we headed back to the warm ranch house, hoping that a hot breakfast would be in the mix. And it was.
We decided to hunt the hill we hunted on opening morning. The good gobbler action had been further up the hill so I looked around. It was not difficult to figure out where the action was. While we had not seen any wild turkeys on our hill, plenty of them had visited this hill. Check out this turkey trail.
We set up the Dark Horse ground blind on a flat spot by some cedar trees near the tracks.
Below is the view looking out of the blind’s front window. A cedar break is directly in front of us and up hill. The trail of tracks runs up hill on the snowy area to the right.
Gladly, it wasn’t as windy or as cold as our hunt by the gate had been earlier. I say gladly because it took 3 hours to see the first wild turkeys. They were up hill bound and stayed inside the woods to our right.
Soon after, I noticed movement in the cedar break in front of the blind. Wild turkeys were moving around in there and some gobblers came down to the edge of the cedars near us.
Several of them laid down, some stood, and they all rested for quite a while. Eventually they went on the move and 4 gobblers stepped out.
I didn’t want to shoot because of the “Y” shaped branch laying on the ground between the turkeys and the blind. I waited, ready to get it done if one got where I had a clear shot.
One did and I smoothly drew my Alpine F1 Fireball to the stops and put my top pin on the gobbler.
And released. The white streak on the gobbler is the white Goat Tuff Opti-Vanes and the Bohning white wrap on my arrow.
Instead of the vitals, the business end of my arrow connected with the gobblers beard — and shaved a couple of inches off it. Grim Reaper has a slogan that says “Watch ‘Em Drop.” And, once again, it did just that. I got to watch the end of his beard drop.
The gobbler changed directions and ran up the hill. The other 3 hopped back in the cedar break and kept going.
Now, it was Collin’s turn to be the shooter. He slid the tripod and video camera over to me. While he got his bow ready I turned the video camera on. We had us some more gobblers coming.
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