Got out to my turkey blind this morning by 5 a.m., set out a lone hen decoy and settled into my comfy Huntmore chair. About a half hour later, I hen yelped and did that again about every 20 minutes. By 7:30, I decided to take a look at my cell phone for emails and then checked out the TradGang forum to pass the time. When I looked up a few minutes later, there was a dandy gobbler out beyond the decoy. It was pecking around in the grass and suddenly was right there in front of me. As I started to draw my Morrison ILF Max1 recurve, the turkey popped its head up and looked my way. He then resumed pecking around in the grass, I took aim and loosed the arrow. At the same time, the bird turned slightly and the arrow struck him angling forward at the hip. On impact, the nock of the arrow blew out from the weight tube I had inside the arrow shaft. The turkey ran off with the arrow dragging behind. I watched him crouch low at the edge of the tag alders for a couple of minutes, and then he started limping toward the adjacent spruce swamp. I left the blind and circled to a logging road that the bird would have to cross. After several minutes, I didn't see the gobbler, so I went back to where I last saw him, found blood and took a step into the flooded marsh. Suddenly, there was a big racket 20 yards ahead and the turkey clattered airborne and flew to the north, toward a pasture.
"Way to go...," I told myself. "Now what?"
I slogged through the marsh and tall brush and stepped into the pasture. I regained my line of sight where I thought the turkey flew and headed in that direction. I hit the logging road and found a fresh turkey track in the sand. Only one foot was making tracks and those were about four feet in between each mark. I followed northward until the tracks indicated that the gobbler crossed the road.
I continued across the road to another logging road. I got just 10 yards or so down that road and heard a commotion in the tag alders to the east. It was the turkey and he was trying to hustle through the brush. Suddenly, it clambered into the air again and flew across another marsh. I couldn't see exactly where he dropped down but headed in that direction anyway. This was unfamiliar territory to me, so it was difficult to predict where he might go. The landscape had forest, grassy paths, overgrown meadow and recent clearcut with inch-thick aspen saplings. I thought that perhaps he landed further to the north again where there was a jungle of tag alder clumps in a soggy meadow.
As I picked my way through the tag alders, I heard a racket in front of me and there was the turkey flapping as it limped away from me. I hustled after it with my bow in one hand and a bow quiver in the other. I almost caught up to it and took out an arrow to try to shoot through the little trees. When the bird got to another small clearing, he jumped into the air and was winging his way to the east. In the process of weaseling through the brush in pursuit of the gobbler, I lost my quiver and had just the one arrow on my person. I marked where the turkey came down and headed that way after him. I wound down through a shallow, brushy ravine and heard the flapping noise again off to the side. I headed in that direction and spotted the turkey that seemed to be nearly played out. I was able to get a relatively close shot at him and hit him at the base of the wing. He took off again, but at a really slow pace, as this nearly 65-year-old fat man caught up to him and broke its neck, as I was out of ammo by that time. All in all, I chased this turkey more than 3/4 mile across woods, marsh and swamps and it took about an hour. That isn't how I planned to get a turkey, but that's how it happened. I really hate to give up on a "hit" animal.
Topic: Looking forward to some turkey tenders (Read 1526 times)
