Went scouting and never left the bedroom

This morning was supposed to be a simple scouting trip, just Angus and I. I had packed some camo blinds, some string and some clothespins and figured we’d set three or four blinds up before we came in. Angus and I were a bit late getting out. Just as we were heading for the door, I caught sight of something in the field—a half-dozen hens and a gobbler. We stayed inside and we watched them come up to within a couple hundred yards of the house. I got out the binos and we opened the window—they were close enough that we could hear them plainly.

After a bit, I looked out in another direction, and here comes another flock of eight or so—three gobblers in this batch. Then we had still another in one of the other pastures with at least two decent gobblers in that bunch.

The gobblers were strutting up a storm. The hens were feeding and ignoring them for the most part. Occasionally a fight would erupt between a couple of gobblers and one or the other would go sailing off in the direction of another flock. This would cause further consternation, and soon our pastures as far as the eye could see were covered in noisy flocks of turkeys. And one point we counted twenty in sight at once, but there were other flocks coming and going.


Angus and I decided to eat breakfast and wait them all out, but the turkeys kept milling about the pastures. Eventually we left in a roundabout way and tried to do an end around through a deserted field. It did not work. After a few hundred yards, we were busted and soon every pasture emptied in a frenzy and we were alone.



It did not end there. We met with turkeys every place we went this morning. When the last blind was set, I radioed back to the house. Girlfriend told us to wait coming back, the turkeys were back and we would spook them. My guess is we had around 50 turkeys in our pastures today—pretty good for a scouting trip that was spent mostly in the back bedroom.