New Found Excitement

[muleman]

I personally have hunted turkeys once. I drew a Utah tag about ten years ago. It was unsuccessful, didn't even see a bird.

Fast forward to Friday and Saturday of this week. Utah has a three day youth hunt prior to the Utah general hunt. I took my two hunting age kids out. Friday saw a little old sign, lots of sandhill cranes, herrons, geese and ducks, but no turkeys.

Saturday we setup in a new area with a lot of droppings. Placed jake and hen decoys and proceeded to call. About an hour into it, we got one gobble a few hundred yards off. We couldn't agree exactly which direction it came from. We were sitting in a sage and grass flat with three canyons that feed into it.

Man that short one second gobble was like a 10cc shot of epinephrine and I didn't even have a gun! We waited and called for about 45 minutes more, then moved to a new set above. From that point on we found a new campsite to pack into and saw a bunch of ruffled grouse and a few mule deer.

Through the rest of May we'll now have three tags to fill. Good thing for me, because I need to hike. As my kids made some speed and age comments as we did some prolonged up hill streches. Who would have thought that a gobble could get me so excited.

 

[MThuntr]

I've always compared turkey hunting in the west to elk hunting. Lots of hiking, calling, waiting, heartbeats, and the wish of being in better shape. Go get 'em!

 

[muleman]

Great analogy. That gobble was like hearing my first bugle as a kid.

Where I'm at it is definitely not like turkey hunting the Eastern part of the US. I lived in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas for a while and I swear there were turkeys behind every bush. Turkey management in Utah is becoming a success story. A lot of turkeys on private property. Public land DIY turkey still requires some boot leather.