The Great 2012 Turkey Hunt

Turkey season where I live has now come and gone. Prior to the season opening, I was extremely excited about getting a chance at an Eastern. Last spring I got spoiled by hunting only twice and killing my first bird. This spring I got a chance to hunt on one of the quail plantations I currently work on. There was, however, a problem with this: The plantation is in Georgia. Being a Florida resident means that I’d get to pay the obscene fee for an non-resident Georgia big game license (yes, turkey apparently qualify as “big” game).

Now, I love to hunt (which I imagine no one could have guessed based off this website), but I’m not a die hard turkey hunter by any means.  So when the opportunity presented itself for a few turkey hunts, I ended up passing. For some reason, the desire to kill a bird just didn’t outweigh the price tag of the out of state license.

But my 2012 turkey season didn’t end there. I happened to get invited to turkey hunt with one of my roommates on his cousin’s hunting lease. The property is actually in Florida, so when I got invited, I leaped all over the opportunity.

I honestly don’t have a clue what I’m doing when it comes to turkey hunting. Last season my friend that took me did all of the calling. I simply sat under a tree and waited for the birds to show up. This season, however, I set out to change that up a bit. I went out and bought a slate and diaphragm call. I practiced quite a bit prior to making this hunt and was excited to put my turkey calling to the test.

So on a Saturday afternoon, my roommate and I drove out to his cousin’s property and got ready to kill a bird. We set up on the edge of a field where we were told some gobblers had been hanging out. With the decoy set up, we soon found suitable trees to sit underneath. Well…my friend found a good tree. I however, discovered that the only other tree within a mile radius of our decoy was of similar diameter to that of a toothpick. So I sat down underneath my twig of a tree and we began calling. It wasn’t long before I heard rustling and hushed curses coming from my friend. I glanced over to see him rolling around and trying to shake his shirt of something. It suddenly became clear to me that even though my tree was possibly the most uncomfortable thing I’d ever sat underneath, it beat the hell out of sitting in ants.

Fun fact about ants: They’re strong believers in karma. So while I silently laughed myself silly as my friend struggled with his bug problem, a second colony of ants was busy tunneling directly beneath me. It was only moments later that they decided to erupt from under the leaves and work their way straight up my pants.

So it may come as no surprise that we quickly decided that moving and calling was the way to go. We walked all around the property searching for turkey. After never hearing a single gobble, we ended up back at the same field we started at. This time we set up on the other side of the field and to our relief, found that there were no ants to be sat in. This time I took my turn at calling. Like usual, I left something of relative importance sitting inside the truck. This day, it happened to be my slate call. I did, however, still have my diaphragm call in my pocket. Now I’m not sure how many of you who are reading this have ever tried to use a diaphragm call, but it’s not exactly easy. It actually took me a few hours before I even figured out how to make noise with the thing, much less turkey noises.

The sun was just begging to dip below the tree line as I let loose with the first of series of frightening turkey calls. If you were to really use your imagination, it’s possible that my turkey calling sounded something like a hen. Unfortunately, I don’t have much of an imagination, so I busted out laughing when my call sounded like a mixture of hen being strangled and a very angry woman screeching at something. It wasn’t much of a surprise when nothing came to my call.

And as my luck would have it, the -only- gobble we heard after an entire afternoon of hunting came while we were driving back to the hunting lodge.
We awoke the next morning with plans to go after the bird we’d heard gobble the evening before. Setting out before light, we drove close to the area and quietly walked in. It wasn’t long after sunrise that we began to hear gobbles. Rather than risk having the birds think that someone was being murdered in the woods, my buddy decided to be the one to call with his slate call. After nearly an hour, it became clear that the gobbles weren’t getting any closer. We soon made the decision to move and began to work our way around the area close to where we had been the evening before.

After quietly stalking for close to an hour, we came up on the same field we had been set up on the day before. It wasn’t much of a surprise either that a big gobbler was busy strutting around -right- where we had been. I would have much rather sat in ants and killed that bird than sit there out of range, and watch him ignore all of our calls before walking away.

We searched around for a while longer and never got close to any other birds. And with a -long- walk back to the truck, I ended my 2012 turkey season without a bird. I’m honestly not upset about not taking a bird this year. Like I said before, I have yet to get the insatiable desire to turkey hunt. I definitely look forward to taking my first eastern in the coming years and maybe with a little bit more practice, I can get a few birds that think my calling really is another turkey and not just a couple of guys laughing at one another in full camo. Only next spring will tell.

Note: I'm really not sure what's going on with my blogger. It took me an eon to get the pictures into this post and I doubt they're even centered. My apologies for this. Hopefully I can find the problem soon.

A Journey Ends...

...And a new one begins.

Earlier this morning I finally graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in Wildlife Ecology and a minor in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. My time spent at this school has been truly unforgettable and I wouldn't trade my experiences or time spent here for anything. I look forward to where my career leads me in the near future and am thankful that I even have the opportunity to work in this field. I owe a big thanks to my family and friends for having my back and helping me get to where I am today.

Go Gators!

Hog Slaying, Technician Style

Name a food...any food...that's better than bacon.

Trick question. Nothing beats bacon.

The land managers on the quail plantations that I work on have given us permission to shoot every hog we see. And we, being good technicians and all, have done our best to follow those orders the past few months. When I first started this job, I imagined that we might see a few hogs over the course of the year. Little did I know that we were going to see much more that just a few.

In the first week alone we killed 15 hogs. They were literally everywhere. It seemed like each time we drove the truck around the plantation, we'd run into a group of them. I was eventually forced to make sure that my gun was topped off on ammunition each time we left the house.

The first pig I killed on the plantation happened to also be my first pig...well...ever. I was riding along with two of the guys I work with when suddenly one of them spotted a group of 8 pigs about 200 yards away in a field. I was fortunate enough to be the only one who brought a gun with a scope on it and quickly found the biggest sow with my crosshairs. I eased the safety off my 30-06, and slowly squeezed the trigger.

Click

In my haste to get the gun out of the truck, I had completely forgotten to put a round in the chamber. After quite the chuckle and a few snide remarks from my friends, I had a round in the chamber and had the crosshairs back on the sow's shoulder. I let loose with the shot and was surprised by the result: It ran off like nothing was wrong.

I quickly chambered another round and sent a second shot toward the same sow (which was now running directly away from us). This time, the shot found the left ham and dropped the sow. With my third round chambered, I quickly looked around to see if there were any more pigs still within sight. I had almost stopped looking when my friend in the back seat quickly whispered, "Piglet...Piglet! Get that last piglet!"

I almost immediately found the piglet in the crosshairs. It was running full speed away from us and up a slight hill. I held the crosshairs high to adjust for distance and to lead the little guy, and squeezed off one of the best shots on my life. The bullet found the back of the pig's head, right between the ears, at over 200 yards. Below is the link to the picture. (I figured not everyone wants to see something relatively gruesome).


Piggy

With all of the pigs gone, we drove the truck around to pick up my first sow. I was absolutely stoked, not only because it was my first pig, but because of the fact that we also got to have a pig roast.

A few weeks later (and several more pigs later) I was finally able to take one with my SKS. I would have had the whole thing on film, but the GoPro literally died a half second before I pulled the trigger. I shot the pig with ballistic tipped 7.62 x 39 rounds and they seemed to -really- do the trick. I found the box they came in to be rather humorous as well.

Often times, while trying to dart deer, we have pesky hogs come in and -literally- start inhaling the corn that we bait with. Trying to scare them away by yelling and whistling rarely does the trick. We've found that the only way to scare them off is with the use of lead. One night in particular, one of the technicians I work with watched as a big sow came in and started eating the corn. He tried whistling, yelling, and even shining his flashlight on the pig. He gave the pig one last chance to scare off with the sound of his .40 cal pistol chambering a round. And it still didn't move.

Lately we've been seeing fewer and fewer hogs during the day. I'm not sure if it's because of the weather, or if we've actually taken some sort of toll on the population (which is doubtful). We've seen quite a few through the nightvision scopes, but since they're mounted on our dart guns, it requires us to switch over to a real gun and use a light.

I don't personally have a pistol of my own and lately I've been seeing pigs come around the corn after dark. Two rifles are a bit much to carry into a climber, so my buddy let me borrow his .357. And the other day, I was more than thankful to have brought it along.

Getting to shoot hogs while at work is something I doubt I'll ever get used to. I feel incredibly lucky every time I hop in the truck and put that SKS in the seat next to me. So what could be better, you might ask?

Getting to use FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) monoculars to hunt pigs at night.

I haven't been able to get enough pictures/video with the FLIR yet, but I should very soon. Hunting using thermal imaging is just...awesome. Stay tuned!