Turkey hunting and BS welcome!

Got my son’s fan done from the turkey 2weeks ago. thought it came out nice

 

Very nice

 

Cut spur sections carefully from legs. Cut around the burr then cut the skin and scales off, scrape to the bone with a dullish knife, push out the marrow. Dust a little borax as you go and it makes it easier to do. Then I drop them in a cup of borax a week or too. Brush them off when dried, trim bones if needed and bees wax the spur sheaths to return them to new. If a spur cap comes of, some do once in a while, just put a dab of super glue on the bone and put it back on. They will hold up for many years this way, none deteriorated for me yet. I used to dip them in polyurethane before I learned a better method.

 

That's cool I have never heard of the borax trick or the beeswax. That's a great string of spurs

 

Excellent Post

 

Basically the same method for doing Herloom wing bone turkey calls

 

That’s been my experience this season as well! Few gobbles in the roost and then silence after. We sat for a few hours in a large field and had no calling response. Got lucky that they lapped the entire field and ended up near us.

 

I just don't have the patience for a sit and call style of hunting.i got tons of respect for you guys that can do it

 

Dats a lot of spurs

 

I sat four hours in one spot the other morning. My ass was killing me .

 

Lol on the opposite side of I just hit 143 miles worth of hunting this morning and a little under 19000 feet of elevation gained

 

Damn that’s impressive! Are you walking so much and looking for birds just visually or calling and go towards the calls? It’s hard here I haven’t heard hardly any gobbles so I have nowhere to go to specifically.

 

Most of how i hunt is walking logging roads finding ridges to hop on and call down into valleys to find huntable birds. It is not unusual to hear five to fifteen birds gobble in a day but they have have to be in a place I can get to and show me that they are hot. I try to never call off the logging roads. The nice thing in this area is we have a ton of state and federal land we can hunt, but even better than that almost all of the timber companies allow you to hunt for free or a small permit fee which opens a ton of well taken care of land to hunt. It is big country out here it is pretty common to be on 5 to 10 thousand acre piece of property with most or all of the neighboring property huntable as well. If any of you ever want to plan a Washington hunt or join me for a hunt i would be more than happy to set you in the right direction or take you out.

 

I call it "deer hunting" for turkeys when you camp a spot. If the sign is there and/or an old particular tom I will sometimes do it myself. I don't "run and gun" either. More of in between the two. I cover ground but with mind to stay out of sight from calling location to calling location. Not a forced march and more of a stroll and normally log an average of 6 miles a day and 160 a season, unless I've broken an ankle lol. Here in early season there is zero understory and guys walking and calling in river bottoms are bumping turkeys they never see. Doesn't take them long to begin to simply stand there and look for a minute or two when they hear hen calling. Late season can be just the opposite, can be hard to hear them or tell which direction they are with all the foliage. Mountain hunting here you may be lucky to find a spot you can shoot to 30 yards so it's a ton of walking and calling as you break around or over the next ridge. Apples to oranges to the midwest or further for sure but what I deal with here. You find them where they are at and that usually takes effort. If I heard 5-15 from each thousand acre property I'd be ecstatic. Believe 4 was the most I heard on a single morning this season. Can recall better years in the early 2000s and hearing a dozen with more I couldn't determine location. Hope it gets back to that point one day but doubtful. Honestly, most times the hard part is locating a tom.

Season video if you are interested. Pictures and stuff, no kill shots and no TV personalities.

https://youtu.be/KYROayk0yy4

 

That's a great video. I got Decent picture for some perspective today. The hike across the valley was a little over 3 miles to get to the ridge with the birds gobbling ended up getting close but no kill. I did get to spend the day with both my boys that does not happen often enough.

 

We are blessed with our bird numbers here for sure. We worked hard with the NWTF trapping and relocating birds. Like everywhere it is a fragile ecosystem and I'm sure we will have issues that effect bird populations but as for now it's pretty damn good.

 

Been a banner season here. the youngins tore them up. these boys were 5 miles back in on NF.

 

What a great spot for some pictures

 

Meanwhile, as the car owner was sitting in our upper field hunting turkey.......




He was pecking at his image. And, earlier this morning there were 3 hens on our patio cleaning up bird seed the birds knock out of the feeder while the Tom strutted his stuff in our back yard.