Our Nebraska turkey camp is drawing to a close, and it’s been a great week hanging out with guys from across the country. If you missed the post on the first few days of turkey camp, check it out HERE.
I had the opportunity to be this year’s speaker for the SkyQuest Outdoors turkey camp held each year in central Nebraska. The guys have killed a pile of birds over the last couple days. Several guys were even first time hunters, making this trip even sweeter for them.
Hunters gathered up in the lodge between hunts.
The last days of camp always seem to find me scrambling to get things done with my bow, and this event was no different. Yesterday, I went back to a field that was surrounded by gobbling turkeys the previous day. The same three jakes were roosted in the same exact spot, but the other birds I heard gobbling the day before were nowhere to be found. It was a pretty quite morning with nothing more than a single hen showing up at my decoys. When I heard several other hunters creeping in too close, scratching on their box calls on the state land next to me, I quickly made an early exit to try and get on some other birds.
This hen fed around the Avian-X Feeder Hen decoy for 30 minutes.
I had roosted a few birds the night before at another location just down the road, so I headed there in hopes of getting on the birds mid-morning. And sure enough, a few excited yelps and cuts from a box call brought a quick response from the gobblers just a few hundred yards away. I grabbed the rest of my gear and headed across the pasture.
The birds were in an old pasture that was sprinkled with cedar trees. It made a great location for playing cat and mouse with the gobblers. And that’s just what happened. The next two hours found me scrambling all over the pasture and woods around it to put a sneak on these birds. These turkeys had been hunted the previous week by another group of hunters and seemed to have the game figured out pretty well. They would give me a courtesy gobble when I called, but would then distance themselves by 50 to 100 yards before resuming their gobbling. I had them in shotgun range 3 or 4 times, but I wanted them much closer for a shot with my bow. I had to be back at the lodge at 11:30 to speak at the mid-day lunch meeting, so I slipped out of the woods and headed back to the truck.
I had several close calls in and around this field, but ultimately the gobblers won the battle on this particular morning.
That afternoon I tagged along with my buddy Brian Van Heuverswyn to a place he had hunted earlier in the morning. He was confident the birds would come back into the area to roost and we’d have a pretty good shot at making something happen. Brian set up in a ground blind on the upper field, while I dropped off into the bottom drainage to try and catch birds cruising through on their way back to roost. I didn’t have a ground blind with me so I stubbed up some cedar branches in hopes of at least breaking me up enough to get to full draw if a bird came my way.
It was a crude setup, but I was hoping it would be enough to allow me to get the draw on a gobbler as it checked out my decoy.
The afternoon was really pretty quiet. Our optimism began to fade fairly quickly when the birds that typically show up early in the afternoon failed to show. With all my gear at my side, I kicked back in the lounger chair and took a little nap while I waited.
I made a few soft calls throughout the afternoon as I waited on a bird to come through.
However, all that changed when I heard Brian shoot. Three birds snuck in from behind his blind and Brian took the shot at just 4 yards.
There was still plenty of time left, so we sat tight hoping other gobblers would show up before sundown. Sure enough, just 45 minutes before dark, I heard birds gobbling down the draw from where I was camped out. With every gobble, I could tell the birds were headed my way. I finally looked up and saw two gobblers 75 yards out. I went in to scramble mode as I tried my best to guess where the shot opportunity was most likely to happen. As the birds closed the distance, they disappeared behind the hill in front of me. They were at 20 yards the next time I saw them. Their heads popped up straight when they finally laid eyes on the decoy they had come looking for.
I stuck the Avian-X Feeder Hen Decoy in the ground just 12 yards from where I would tuck in behind the cedars.
The lead bird immediately went into strut. I eased my bow up to draw and was quickly picked out. The second bird had caught my movement, putted in alarm, and turned to leave. Knowing I was in trouble, I went ahead and came to full draw. The second bird was leaving fairly fast, but the strutter wasn’t sure what was up. He slowly turned to follow the spooked bird and when he walked into the one opening I had between the trees at 20 yards, I let the arrow fly. The arrow smacked the longboard across the drumsticks and he was dead in 5 seconds.
First blood for the Mathews Halon 32.
I jumped up out of my chair, thanked the Lord for the opportunity, and ran over to check out my bird. When I picked him up and flipped him over, I realized I had killed one of the prettiest birds of my turkey hunting career.
This Nebraska longbeard is as pretty a turkey as I’ve ever killed.
I grabbed my gear, threw the bird over my shoulder, and climbed out to meet the guys in the field above me. After a few high-fives and photos we made the walk back to the truck.
Good times with friends in turkey camp is hard to beat!
A turkey over the shoulder at sunset is an incredible way to put the wraps on a week in turkey camp.
It had been a rollercoaster of a day in the turkey woods. Several close calls throughout the day had continued to keep my heart racing. But it all came together as the sun began to sink. Punched tags and good times with friends are hard to beat when it comes to spending time in a Nebraska turkey camp.
