Turkey hunting in 2009

Well, I'm about a month or so late with this post, but better late than never I suppose. Kathleen is usually the one to keep our blog up to date, and she's been reminding me regularly that I need to go ahead and get this done so she can start posting new stuff. So, here goes. Dad and I went on our annual turkey hunt in north-central Oregon from April 15-18 this year. We've been doing this trip for about 4 years now, and it's always a lot of fun. It's the perfect way to ward off the several months of cabin fever I always develop between December and March. Anyway, last year was the first year we were both successful in bringing home turkeys (mine was bigger of course), and in the process we found a natural blind that someone had made a long time ago that was in a really good spot. In fact, we both shot our birds last year from that blind within an hour of each other. Well, this year dad hunted the blind by himself on opening morning because I couldn't get there until that evening. He had some birds come in and a really close call (i.e., missed a shot at a running bird), but no luck. On the second morning we set out well before light to hunt it together, and low and behold, when we got there, someone else was already in it! How frustrating! Well, at first anyway. It actually turned out to be a good thing, as we ended up finding ourselves in the right place at the right time about an hour later. As we hunted the oak trees on the edge of a deep canyon, a gobbler ended up coming in below us without ever knowing we were there. In fact, when he gobbled he was only about 40 yards away from us, but the steepness of the canyon hid him from view. Dad and I dropped to the ground, and he got out his call while I got my gun ready. A couple of soft clucks and yelps from dad and he came right to us. I shot him at about 10 yards when his head finally popped over the rim of the canyon. What a cool experience that was! Dad didn't end up getting a bird this year, but we're both 50% now (2 birds in 4 years), which is about 4 times the average success rate for the unit we hunt, so I think we're doing pretty good. Hope you enjoy the pics!

Turkey pictures...

This is the blind we both got our birds from last year.

This is the view from inside the blind with a couple
of decoys out.