Turkeys are pretty random

A perfect roosted gobbler tucked in the night before, just on the other side of a freshly tilled field. The rain had just left. A 3 decoy spread 10 yards out into the field. Worms slurping in the mud. One hour and fifteen minutes after our dance began, the game was up. Not one, but two gobblers had come up to the edge of the woods, never even gotten in sight of our well concealed blind and then turned around and trailed off the other way with the hens. The sense of utter defeat: priceless.

We thought we were doing it all right. We just could not close the deal. That's why it's the hardest game on the North American continent. I've hunted this kid of setup several times over the years. This is the sort of setup that requires only the foresight to plan it. No calling required-- no messy belts or pins. All you have to do is be in the blind at first light. Yeah.

Moose and I were out driving around Saturday after hunting. "Turkeys are pretty random." he said.

"No," I replied. "They are strict creatures of instinct and habit. Given a set of conditions, turkeys will do the exact same thing each time. The problem is we don't understand all the variables that make up those conditions. Hence, they look unpredictable to us."


Sunday was worse. The turkeys had gone off towards the creek bottoms on Saturday rather than be in the field with us. Moose and I took off out Cabin Ridge to find a good setup and ambush them coming out of the hollers and into Soggy Bottom. Rain had been through again the previous evening to give us an almost-exact repeat of the day before. If someone had handed me a rewind button, this would have been the result. When we got there, a gobbler was already roosted at the base of the hill, probably over the old pioneer cabin itself. We pussy-footed within 80 yards and hid in a tangle of blow-down. When I tree-yelped, we got a lukewarm reception. The gob and his hens hopped down silently and moved off, right past us, going back up the hill to the pastures we had hunted the previous day.