Looked out this morning and thought, "am I nuts to think of turkey hunting in this weather?" What the heck, I'll brave it out and get in the blind for a few hours. Decided to take the MZ shotgun since it was snowing hard, and it has to have a hot water bath after the hunt anyway
When I got to the blind it looked like this (yes, that's the ladder to my stand on the right, I spend a lot of hunting hours at the food plot - that's also what's left of the stump feeder on the far right, the one the deer ate when it ran out of corn but it's been empty for weeks now, baiting turkeys is not legal. I will set up a feeder near the stand & blind before deer season, though!)
The squirrels and songbirds didn't seem to be too put off by the snow, but the only game birds I saw in the first two hours were a couple geese checking out the pond in the next field. Then about 10:00AM I had a lone hen cross the food plot. I thought I heard a gobble in the distance, but couldn't be sure. I just continued to set & observe, never even tried calling. About 10 minutes later three hens walked past. Then two more, then another pair, then I saw a big turkey come up over the creek bank. Could it be? It sure was interested in the hens which were past me now. It came closer and at about 60 yards I could see it definately was a gobbler. Then he stopped and fanned for the hens. They must have ignored him too much to suit his ego, because he came closer and fanned again at 40 yards. Hmmmm..... still too far away for a certain shot. It seemed like forever, but he finally decided to persue the hens a little farther. Big mistake for him! At 24 yards I couldn't take the suspense any longer, and pulled the trigger. Sorry for the poor pic, but it's too nasty for my wife to spend a lot of time outdoors to take photos
24 pounds, 1 1/4" spurs, 10" beard, and one cold, but happy, hunter! The gobbler was missing a lot of feathers from fighting and breeding, and looked kind of beat-up, but he had love on his mind when he departed this world, so he probably went out a happy guy
Looks like my spring hunting is over
He made my two gobbler limit, so now I can start getting geared up for deer season this fall. Then, of course there's fall turkey season 
