Tim\'s Turkeyfest, 2015

[iccyman001]

Well, I should be unloading all of my gear and cleaning it, but I really wanted to post some pictures of the great trip!
You may see and hear some of the same stuff in a few sections, but this will be the bulk of it.

First and foremost, before I overload you with pictures and stories, I have to tell you about a great guy...TIM!
I think that everyone on this trip and anyone that would meet him would agree with everything that I am about to type.

Words cannot describe how much of a stand up guy Tim is. Before we even got there, Tim was already planning on making the trip simple and smooth for us.

We showed up to his house (beautiful property by the way) and he had two trailers waiting for us down in a bowl that had a pond in it. Next to the trailers and the pond was a nice little shelter with three sides walled in, a roof, cement slabs, and a nice big table with chairs.

He went out of his way by asking friends to let us use their trailer so I didn\'t have to tow mine up and so we didn\'t have to sleep in tents.
He has a nice big one for Francis, Gary, and I then had a nice pop up trailer for Scott and Trent.

We showed up and Tim pulled out this giant list of properties that we could hunt. Before we showed up Tim and his secret weapon (I\'ll get to that) went around knocking on doors and getting places for us to hunt.

Anyways, Tim...... one of the nicest and most accommodating people I have ever met. The entire time he was driving us around to our spots, showing use all of our spots, calling for us, bringing us coffee in the morning, and making sure we had everything we needed.
Whether he was taking us out hunting or cracking jokes at us, he always had a smile on his face and was extremely pleasant.

Tim has two qualities that I really enjoy seeing in people because I enjoy doing the same thing. First was how accommodating he is. He bent over backwards to make sure we had a great time and he completely exceeded all standards. Second was his passion for hunting. Everyone might be sitting here thinking \"well, I hunt a lot, it\'s my passion too...\" I am talking on a whole different level. Not only is he a great hunter, but his passion is also to help all others with their hunting. His mission was to have a father and son team shoot a bird and not only a bird, a first bird..... His mission was to get someone their first bird with a bow (me)......his mission was to get people their first Rios, etc etc etc

I could blab on the whole time about how great he is, but I will let the others speak about him too!

I\'ll leave it with by saying, THANK YOU SO MUCH TIM! I had a great time, great experience, and learned so much.

I also want to mention Tim\'s secret weapon, Craig.
Craig is Tim\'s friend and a FANTASTIC hunter. He spent hours before we even showed up knocking on doors and scouting for us.
He was also the key element in getting Trent his first bird. This guy knew his stuff and was just a go go go type guy.
Looking at all of his kills and hearing his stories, we knew we were in good company.
SO thank you Craig for all of your help.



Day 1:

Gary, Francis and I all kind of showed up around the same time, met with Tim and Craig, and they showed us our giant wall of deer horns, his hunting rig, and where we would be sleeping.

There was still some light left and Gary was getting kind of antsy.
So Tim sent him in a direction and Francis and I unpacked and shot our bows.......


About 45 minutes later we got a text from Gary...... HE SHOT A JAKE less than 2 hours being in Kansas!




To make it 100 times more cool.... HE CAUGHT IT ON HIS GOPRO!


<!-- m --><a class=\"postlink\" href=\"https://youtu.be/ujMKhG0A4WQ\" onclick=\"window.open(this.href);return false;\">https://youtu.be/ujMKhG0A4WQ</a><!-- m -->



SO.... the trip was starting off great and the COLT was getting some action!





Scott and Trent showed up a bit later, we went down to camp, make some elk sloppy joes, and shared our stories!
We made our game plan for the next morning and went to bed!



Day 2....

 

[iccyman001]

We woke up early day #2 and it was very wet and rainy, but hopes were high, so we set out!

Scott and Trent went behind Tim\'s house where Gary shot his jake, Francis and Gary went to another place, and I went out on my own.
I\'ll let everyone else highlight their hunts, but I can put in some minor cliff notes. Scott and Trent saw a nice long bread, Francis and Gary saw 27 turkeys, and I saw a.... a raccoon :lol:

I was in a nice area, but I wasn\'t hearing or seeing anything, so I decided to go do some walking around. While I was walking around and glassing I saw some deer bedded down in an area up ahead of me about 125 yards, so I decided to play some games. I put in an extremely slow stalk on them, got within about 20 yards, pretended to draw back and in my head said \"thwack\".
I didn\'t wanna yell boom because I didn\'t want to ruin Tim\'s hunting spots, but man was it a rush sneaking up on those deer.

IT was wet and rainy, so we all kind of went in for lunch that afternoon. After it cleared up we decided to split up. Tim was going to take the bow hunting guys (Francis and I) and Craig was going to take the shotgun guys (Scott, Trent, and Gary)

Tim, Francis and I went to a few different spots, let out some calls, and kept on moving around until something responded. Finally we hit an area and had a bird sound off when we called. After chasing the bird for about 3 miles, setting up and breaking down a few times, we made a final push on the bird and got within 100 yards. Tim stopped him in his tracks with his calling and he started heading our way. Francis immediately pointed out a great set of trees for me to stand behind and they backed up behind me about 20 and 40 yards and called this bird in. I had time to pick my shooting lanes, range them, and then watch the bird walk in. He was a nice long beard. Anyways, he hit my shooting lane, 28 yards exactly, I set my pin on the feather I wanted to hit, let the arrow fly. THWACK. I watched the arrow hit, watched the bird do a barrel roll and feathers fly........

We waited a few seconds, walked over to where the bird was, and this is where it started going down hill......
Lots of feathers, arrow had blood on the shaft and fletching, but NO BIRD. It made it even worse when we all started commenting on how we didn\'t hear any noses after it was hit. No crazy flapping, he didn\'t fly, he didn\'t cross the creek near him.... it was just silence after the hit. After a giant search..... we didn\'t find him.


This was very tough for me to swallow because I do not like injuring animals and not being able to recover, but the choice was made to move on......


While this was all going on, TRENT WAS ABLE TO PUT DOWN A NICE BIRD!
I will let them tell the story better, but he put the smack down on a nice jake! There is definitely some good humor to the story too, but I will let Gary and Scott tell it





We left the area I lost my bird at and Francis and I went to another area.
We searched a real good portion of a creek bed. We saw a coyote, but couldn\'t find a bird. We came out from the creek bed to an open field and saw a hedge row with another field behind that. We didn\'t see anything in the field so we decided to cross.....

As we were walking to the hedge row we found turkeys....

Turns out the field had a little bowl in it and there were 3 turkeys in it with a red head standing right there.

We ran back to the woodline, climbed a tree stand we found and noticed the turkeys were feeding back towards the area we were in before.
Francis and I ran quickly down the creek bed and cut the field in half. We pop out to the field and see they were still going further down....


This is where I recommended Francis keep going down and I will get behind them, worst case scenario I would scare them towards him.
Francis went on and this is where it was difficult. How was I going to get into this field without them seeing me.....


You guessed it.......... BELLY CRAWL TIME!

I crawled my way out to the field, bow and decoy in hand, using small clumps of grass, a few dirt piles, and the terrain to get closer. I cut the distance from about 240 yards to 60. I took a look and I noticed the birds were going towards Francis, so I held off. After they cleared me I started to stand up..... UH OH..... 3 more birds out in the field about 100 yards away......

BELLY CRAWL TIME. I got within about 60 yards of them too and this is where it got difficult.....

Those other birds came back...........
So now I am sitting in the middle of this field, 3 birds to my right, 4 birds to my left, and I am pinned in the middle in plain view.
I tried being sneaky and messaged Franics \"Francis, call if you can\"...... thinking that if he started using turkey calls it would confuse them.


RING RING RING..... sure enough, Francis was calling alright.... he called my phone!!!!!!!
I answered and hung up real quick and messaged \"TURKEY CALL!\"

He started calling, but they were feeding and waiting for the sun to go down so they could roost.
They kept on coming within 80 to 60 to 80 to 60 yards, but finally a jake broke off and came within 40 yards of me. I told myself if he came in more I would shoot him. Well, he came in to 35 yards and then 30........

In the middle of this field with 7 turkeys around me, I drew back, picked where I wanted to hit, and released.... THWACK.
I watched it hit, clean pass through, and then it began.....

He started wobbling and walking away towards the hedge row, but was extremely injured. SO bad that all the other birds noticed and started beating him up! Anyways, he makes it to the hedge row and beds down. By this time Francis had made his way over to me so we decided to let the birds clear the field and then went to the hedge row.


We got there and found a large puddle of blood. We took another step and the bird jumped up from behind a little shrub and Francis yelled \"SHOOT IT!\"
I had no idea what was going on and didn\'t have an arrow knocked..... the bird ran to the other side of the hedge row and FLEW OFF to the corner of the field, into thick, private land.......................


we spent the new hour searching as much of the area as we could, with little to no light, and then flashlights..... NOTHING :downthumb:
This put me in such a horrible mood. Once again, I hate not recovering animals and none of it made sense.

Mind you this is all my first turkey experience, so here I am so confused on why my shots... that were not rushed and seemed great, lead to nothing.....
It also didn\'t help when everyone saw the blood puddle or pics of it. \"That is the most blood I have ever seen from a turkey\" seemed to be the general consensus.... but,... I had nothing to show....

I was extremely upset with myself, so we went back and made dinner and I thought about how I was going to go back the next day to find that bird.

We got back late and made some brats and beans! Talked some more about our hunts, Scott and Trent used COLT on Trent\'s bird, more hunting stories were shared, and we called it a night.






Day #3

 

[iccyman001]

Day #3

After a rough night thinking about the turkeys and just being upset about how it all went down, we got up and went on our hunts.
Mind you when we woke up the weather app said we were clear from rain for that day..... WRONG.

I went to where I had shot my jake and Gary went out to where he saw those 27 turkeys.

I didn\'t find any birds that morning, didn\'t find my bird, but I did find some REALLY cool sheds.....









Tim and Francis went out and checked a couple spots, but it started raining pretty hard so we went in for lunch.
No word from Gary for a while though.....


Well, after a lot of rain, we decided to head back out, but we got a text from Gary...............


ANOTHER BIRD DOWN

He toughed it out in the rain, put in a nice crawl on some jakes, and blasted one!







day 3 part 2 coming.... I need to go do a few chores!

 

[iccyman001]

Day 3 part 2 continued.....

After we got Gary back, Tim brought us all down to a new piece to hunt.
It was a giant creek bottom and looked like BIG BUCK heaven...... no birds to be found though.

So we decided to pick our spots for the night.

Francis went in where Gary and he had seen all of those birds and I went into where I shot at the jake.

We we got set up and within 20 minutes I had a jake coming in hot to my calls....
He came out from the creek bed and just started milling around the field about 80 yards out, paying no attention to me or my decoys.
Then another jake came out and started playing around in the field with the other. After about 30 minutes they went down into the creek bed and I get a text message....




It was from Francis. At first glance I was like \"cool, he has birds in front of him....\"
Then Gary started saying congrats in the message and I looked closer! Sure enough, Francis arrowed a nice jake!

He decided he was going to wait out there longer for a long beard to come in, so I got back to my calling. I called the two jakes back out to the field and they started SLOWLY coming in.....

this is where my luck turned again.....

Gary messages us and says \"TIM IS COMING TO GET YOU GUYS, WEATHER IS GETTING BAD AND TIM SAID IT\'S GOING TO BE A DOOSY\"

I looked outside my blind and had no idea what they were talking about. I also got antsy because the birds were at about 60 yards now and still coming in.... then it hit..... like a freight train....

I noticed the jakes ran off and I had no idea why, because i know I didn\'t spook them....
It was this wind and cold front that came in hard. It went from calm to extremely high winds, dropped about 15 degrees and IN CAME THE RAIN, THUNDER, AND LIGHTING.

We got back to camp and it just unleashed on us.


It\'s ok though, we had another bird down, we were celebrating Gary\'s birthday, and everyone was happy.

The menu for Garys birthday was my last 3 packs of elk backstraps, homemade potato chips (kind of), and an ice-cream cake!

 

[bnsafe]

first off i would like to reiterate what dan said about tim. he is a first class stand up guy. craigs ok to, :haha: . it was a great experience and got to meet some great guys.
ok i will tell about trent and my experiences as dan has covered the overall hunt. trent and i went out friday morning to where gary shot his bird the night before. it was raining fairly hard most of the morning so we didnt hear much and didnt see anything. after working our way to the back of the property i heard a bird gobble a long ways across a field. we couldnt find a place to set up cause of all the thorns on the trees so we moved around the field to the hedgerow where the bird had been. as i was rounding the last cedar tree the gobbler walked out of the hedgerow about a 100 yds away. we saw each other at the same time. after a little stare down he walked back into the the fencerow. i motioned to trent and we ran to the fencerow and got set up with trents gun facing out the side the bird was on. i started calling. nothing. then on the third call the bird gobbles right on top of us. problem was he had come back out to where he had seen me and we were pointed the wrong direction. i tried to get tj turned around but the bird saw us and took off. we set there for a few minutes then decided to move on. i stood up and snuck out to the edge that the bird was still a 100 yds away but was walking away. he had had enuf. we went back to the campground and grabbed some lunch. after lunch we went with craig and gary running and gunning. it was great. i used to do that in mo but had to quit due to lack of hunting ground. i forgot how fun it can be. we called a few times with no success and moved on. then craig got some birds to gobble. we quickly set up, put the dekes out, and got ready. after about 5 minutes here comes 6 jakes, gobbling, running, putting on a show. to say tj bout lost it is a understatement. he was breathing hard and shaking. they came to about 20 yds and craig started cutting to get them to put on a show and they did. they went nuts right by us. tj couldnt take it any longer and he shot, the bird going down very hard. no flopping or anything. the next thing i knew i heard shoot again, in ks you are allowed two birds, and gary was hollering for tj to shoot another one. well tj didnt know what he meant and shot his bird on the ground again thinking he was suppose to shoot that bird again (i have picked out alot of shot, lol). on the second shot i hear tj say \"the scope came off my gun and hit me between the eyes\". i looked over and sure enuf the weaver scope mount had come off the gun, with all four screws still in the mount. he had a little goose egg between his eyes. it was funny. you will notice he doesnt have a scope on the gun in his picture. that was his first turkey and a rio to boot. he was so excited and thankful.
day two put us back in the field the bird had come so close on the day before. we set up and called a few times and i looked at the cedar where i had saw the bird the day before and there was a gobbler standing there. he stood looking at the dekes for a long time then got real nervous. i looked across the field and a coyote was heading towards him. he turned and went back into the brush. we were bummed but a few minutes later he came back out and started down the fenceline. i traded spots with tj and got him ready with his shotgun pointing straight down the fence row. i called and the bird gobbled, on the other side of the fence. well i got tj gun pointed in the right direction and was pretty sure this was going to tag him out. i saw the bird at 15 yds right in front of his gun but the bird was in tall grass and down a slope, so the birds head would come up and tj could see it then it would disappear again, looked like a game of whack a mole had broke out. the bird finally saw him move and left. even though he was so close tj didnt have a clear shot and chose not to shoot.
we headed back and drove around for awhile and did some father son talking stuff. after lunch we headed to a knew spot but didnt see anymore birds. tj decided that night that he was happy and satisfied with his bird and didnt want to hunt anymore so we packed the camo and hung out with the guys and the storm that night. after a long nite of cold, rain, thunder, lightning, and a little leaking of the tent we left the next morning.
it was a great hunt. spent some quality time with my son, killed his first turkey, and met some stand up guys. cant ask for more than that.

 

[iccyman001]

Day 4 and my final hunt


I got up nice and early because I wanted to be in super early for my last hunt. I had to leave at 2pm, so I needed to make it happen.
Gary came out with me, we set up, and went to work!

About 2 minutes after we set up, I called and they responded! We had two birds behind us and about 10 minutes later, we had a jake coming in.....


Sadly enough this bird was on a mission and only came within 46 yards of me and then kept on going.

There was no way in heck I was going to take a 46 yard shot with my bow at the small bird, so we decided it was time to bring the hunt to them.
We packed up and went back to grab my beneli................

I officially threw in the towel and dubbed it \"Shotgun Sunday\"

We went into the area we heard another bird head that morning. We stepped into the woods, I let out some loud calls, he responded far away and it was game on!

He was real far away, so we put in a good sprint and called again. He hadn\'t moved, but he was sounding off like crazy to my calls. We were lucky because it was very thick in there, so we had cover to use to our advantage. I did notice something though as we were calling. He wasn\'t moving, so I was worried there may have been a creek in between us...

I got to within 125 yards I figured and decided to start the kneeling, crawling, and eventually got to a belly crawl.
This is where it got interesting.


I was about 50 yards away from the bird and we were calling at each other like crazy.. all of a sudden I see movement and see a coyote coming in at my while I am laying prone on the ground calling. I raise the gun up and he stops, about 10 feet away from me.......
I wanted to shoot him so bad, but I had two thoughts go through my head real fast. 1) I want that bird and 2) I wasn\'t sure if the few branches in front of me would effect my shot. (at 10 yards I wouldn\'t have any issue now that I think about it) anyways, I put the gun down and the yote took off...\'..


Back to the bird, I am crawling, calling, crawling, calling, an I get to where I am so close that I could feel the base of the birds gobble inside of my body.

I was hiding behind a cedar tree about 25 yards away from a field that he was in and I see a head. I froze and waited to see what was going to happen. This is when he kind of hung up and I couldn\'t see him because it was so thick. Gary crawled up and said that he was about 25 yards in front of me.... BEHIND A STUPID SMALL LITTLE FENCE..................................

THAT IS WHY HE DIDNT COME IN :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:


STUPID BIRD! Anyways, he left, most likely because we were so close and he didn\'t see a hen....

That was it! I had given it my all, but couldn\'t make it happen.


All in all it was such a fantastic trip. The people were great, Kansas was beautiful, the wildlife was everywhere, and I learned so much about myself as a hunter, taught myself some new skills, and tried got my feet wet with turkey hunting........


I\'m still a bit frazzled about those two birds and kind of stand offish on whether I want to bowhunt them again, but BOY AM I READY TO PUT SOME STALKS IN ON SOME ELK AND WHITETAIL!

 

[otcWill]

Looks like an awesome time with a bunch of great guys. You\'re a generous man, Tim! Thanks for taking the time to write it up guys.

 

[cohunter14]

Congrats on a fun hunt guys! Way to put Colt to work :upthumb:

And nice video Gary!

 

[Zpd307]

I made it back to reality this afternoon around 3:30 pm. thanks to a great chauffer, francis! we had scouts tonight and just got home.... I have so much to say, I will need some time to collect my thoughts before I start typing. it will also take some time to upload all the pics that I took.... but I will say that this trip was so fun and worth the 9 1/2 hour drive/ride.... 14 for francis!

 

[iccyman001]

Don\'t forget to show everyone your video, Gary

 

[SGH31]

Looks like a good time.

 

[razorback]

I enjoyed the read. Sounds like it was a lot of fun and a lot of turkeys. Those gobbles can be addictive! :upthumb:

 

[Zpd307]

I have the photos on the computer, but i need to resize them to get them on here.... Also, if someone can teach me how to put my gopro vids on youtube, i can get some more put on here. Like francis and i talked about, i have a hard time expressing my thoughts into words....

 

[cnelk]

gary
You can also host your pics & videos on Photobucket [free]
And then just post the link to video here - just like a pic

For YouTube [also free], you will need to also create an account and load it there.
I like to change the settings to PRIVATE so only the people with the link can view movies, not the whole world

 

[Zpd307]

[attachment=0]<!-- ia0 -->photo 1.JPG<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment]
since the weather forecast was sucky, we spent the trip heading south watching the sky. in this pic, the weather was so far so good!

 

[Zpd307]

[attachment=0]<!-- ia0 -->photo 2.JPG<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment]
like what was said earlier, francis and I got to tims house around the same time as dan. as we were getting acquainted, a tom lit off and gobbled behind tim\'s house. man was I getting antsy. so after we settled in, I camod up and tim and craig dropped me off with a plan of attack. I came to Kansas with a new gopro that I got for xmas, so I could get some practice with it before September. so as I was was still hunting through an area with a known tom it, these two jakes pop out and start walking straight at me.... I know, jakes, but it was still fun to have this happening. I had made a plan to take the first legal bird, to make sure I came home with some meat and to take away some pressure. the vid on youtube doesn\'t do the encounter any justice. they were only ten yards away when they turned into the field. mind you, I was standing out in the open... as I was snapping some pics and sending texts, the gobbler sounded off.....

 

[Zpd307]

[attachment=0]<!-- ia0 -->photo 3.JPG<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment]

 

[iccyman001]

Gary had this weird thing where he liked to kill a bird and then find sheds.....
It happened both times :think:

 

[Zpd307]

[attachment=0]<!-- ia0 -->photo 4.JPG<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment]
I didn\'t take a lot of hunting pics, they were done with the gopro..... this pic was taken on Saturday. I was revisiting an area that francis and I hunted the morning before.
Friday afternoon craig took myself, scott and trent out. craig knows what he was doing! I learned some things from him! we went out and got trent his first bird... we were set up perfect and I had my gopro going, so I thought, for an epic video. the encounter was epic, but the battery was dead. no vid.... we got into some more birds though!

 

[mainebrdr]

Thought I might post a few observations and thoughts on Dan\'s thread.

First of all it was wet! Where I live I don\'t think we\'ve had three rainy days in a row in over two years, but we did that weekend. I don\'t usually hunt turkeys in the rain but if you drive 14 hours to turkey hunt, you hunt! I was kind of worried about bows out in the rain, especially for someone wearing a \"Team Hoyt\" cap! The rain finally quit on Sunday, right about the time Dan headed for home. Must have been something like throwing Peter overboard! At times I couldn\'t tell if we were hunting or just mud running in the Cruiser!

To be honest\' I have never done anything like this before but I had an incredibly good time! Solid guys that love hunting. So glad that Scott\'s son Trent could come and in spite of what it looks like in the pictures, Trent did the lion\'s share of cleaning his bird himself with \'Colt\'. Saturday evening we had a special dinner for Gary (he\'s 31 now, or something like that). Lightning flashing and thunder crashing while eating Elk steaks and fried potatoes outside by the pond. Something I won\'t soon forget.

Tuesday evening I happened to drive on the road where we dropped Gary and Francis off to hunt a spot and right at that spot 10 yards into the field was a hen and a longbeard. He gobbled as I went by. I think there were several things he could have been saying!

One other thing. I\'m not anywhere near as nice as Dan portrayed. Ask my wife.