I have put a lot of time and effort into tagging a turkey this Spring. I have hunted Darcy's field hard. When Matt was away for work I went out a lot on my own. We moved the blind to a location where the birds were constantly crossing and left it there for several days for them to adapt to it. Several things I have learned after many close encounters.
The first thing I noticed is that it is really hard to split the Tom up from the hens once he finds them. Almost immediately after hearing that gobble in the morning and him entering the field, he locates the hens and is stuck to them like glue the entire time. The Jake was different. He didn't really care about the other turkeys. Sometimes he would go near them, but majority of the time I saw him on his own or feeding with deer, which I found funny.
The second thing I noticed is the hens don't care about the decoys. Only one crazy hen put a show on for me where she ran across the field almost in a zig-zag motion. She ended up nesting in sand right next to my hen decoy and sunbathing. She drew the other hens in on this particular hunt. The Jake was with the Tom and approaching my decoys. This is the closest I came to shooting a Tom at Darcy's field. I almost had him come in, but he was cautious of my Tom decoy. I think he was a little intimidated by it. Him and the Jake began crossing and was coming into range. As my luck goes weather changed and it began to downpour rain as soon as they started to move. Instead of continuing into shooting range the ran off where they came from and I lost any chance I had. After this hunt I decided that was it and it was time to put the Tom decoy away.
I completed a few hunts with just a hen and I called the Tom in close a few times, but he never quite made it to range. One early morning just after sunrise I had a Jake gobble back at me. It was really exciting he was responding to me really well and I saw him come out from the far side of the field. He was probably 500 yards away and he heard me and came running. I had my safety off and gun ready, but he came around the side of my blind. I had the windows up (of course!), but tried to stand and sneak to see if I could open the window and get a shot. He was still on the move and ended up behind the blind. Later he came back out from the left of my blind and still never gave me a shot.
After this hunt I figured I was finished. I knew I just came as close as I would to getting a shot at a bird and all I could do was hope that Matt would shoot one this Spring so one of us would fill a tag.
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