June 2009 Updates page 8
15 June
Turkey Story
John, Jon and the Staff,
Rex and Deb Amstutz checking in after a very long and successful turkey season. Before we start, we had a goal of filling all 10 tags, 5 a piece for all three states, (2-Ks, 2-Mo, 1-Ia). So you will have to read to find out if we got all 10 filled.
We started out on opening day in Kansas at one of our favorite farms. Debbie was in my favorite location, so as a humble guide I had to take second choice location. And was it a good one, at first light I had a beautiful gobbler come in to my decoys strutting, and I had my first tag filled. When I went over to get him, I was amazed to count 4 beards (32 inches). After harvesting 38 gobblers, this was my first multiple beard.
After the thrill wore off, it wasn't long until the action heated up again with another monster longbeard showing up around noon. He came in on my back side unannounced, so I wheeled the gun up and over the big log I was hiding behind and got a shot off left handed, and by noon the first day my Kansas season was over.
Meanwhile, my wife could not stand the shooting, so she came over to my location after lunch, only to see a couple more hens, one of which was bearded. I told her that tomorrow that one would be hers. After a beautiful sunset, we headed back to camp.
The second day we both sat where I got my two, and sure enough that hen showed up again. And Deb did her thing and had herself a trophy bearded hen with an impressive 8 inch beard. No gobblers were spotted the second day. The third day was our last, and with weather coming in, we decided to fill the last tag with what we thought was a small gobbler, or possibly a large jake. None the less, we were on track with our preseason goal of filling all 10 tags.
From there we went back home to Indiana to wait until the Missouri season opened. And on opening day we found ourselves in Harrison county, windy conditions prevented any harvest. But on day two, I was able to run and gun down my first tag. It was a nice gobbler with 1 3/8 spurs, the shot was 55yds. I was using an 870 with a primos jelly head super full tube, with Remington 3 1/2 nitro turkey # 5 shot. As you can see, those birds are tough, the shot at that distance was lodged into his leg.
My wife was unsuccessful in the first two days, and we were scheduled to be in Iowa on the 22 April. So we had our work cut out to fill another 3 tags when we go back. Iowa was much more forgiving for us. We both had no problem in filling our muzzle loading shotgun tags. On the second day, Debbie had a nice gobbler hit the ground at fly down about 20 ft. from her decoys, and the smoke flew and her Iowa was filled. I filled my tag the third day with another nice longbeard. At this time we had 7 of 10 tags filled. We had two more days back in Missouri before this trip ended, but no gobblers were harvested, so the pressure was on to fill the last 3 tags with 1 week left in the season.
We went home and I had a concrete job to complete, and on Thurs of the last week, we went back for the last three days of the Missouri season. We drove all night Thursday and arrived at the farm at 2 am, slept in the car and went out at 4:30, man was I tired. After I got out in the field it started to rain lightly and the birds I set up on flew down on the other side of the ditch and they were feeding away from me. So I got down in the ditch and snuck down about 400 yds to get in front of them. I peeked up my head out of the draw where I thought they would be, and sure enough there they were, 4 gobblers headed right for me. I belly crawled the final 30 yds in some tall grass and got perched up on an ant hill. I picked out the closest one and fired. It was over for me, my 5th and final gobbler. It was a 57 yds shot, and when I went out to get him, low and behold it was another 4 bearded trophy with a total of 36" of beard.
At this point Debbie had two days left and two tags to fill. We one chance on sat am at fly down, she shot at the gobbler at 60 yds with my gun, but lady luck was not listening that day, and the bird flew away. No bird on Sat, so our streak would fall short of our goal. One more day left, It was a clear Sunday morning and the Lord blessed my wife with her 4th trophy of the year. Right at fly down, the hen flew over her decoys in the field, but the gobbler couldn't resist and landed right next to the pretty boy and pretty girl. She put the red dot on the money and she let the 870 work. Apparently the gobbler was so close to the hen decoy that she killed the hen decoy also. So we are calling our season 10 for 10 including one decoy, ha, ha!
All in all we had a tremendous year, with 8 gobblers and 1 bearded hen. We did this when the talk on the street was that the bird numbers were down as much as 40% down from recent years. This is just a compliment to the club and its productive properties available for all to hunt.
Again, thanks to all for reading, and best of luck to all in your hunting adventures.
God bless,
Rex and Deb
Wow, thank you to Rex and Deb for a superior presentation of their season.
