Well, instead of rain this year, we were blessed with wind and cold.  We set up camp on Wednesday in 93 degree weather and that night it dropped into the 40s and would never rise above 55 degrees for the rest of the trip.  Two nights we awoke to 26 and 28 degrees.  Brrrr!

Thursday woke up windy and cold.  We slept in and then started the day with a fine breakfast put on by Luke.  This consisted of scrambled eggs, sausage, and hash browns.  Once breakfast was over, we started our hunt.  We soon spotted a large tom in an alfalfa field with 9 hens.  Matt and I set up on them and I was able to harvest the tom, quite possibly a 4-year old bird.  He had curled spurs that were ivory-tipped in color.  He hung quite nicely from a limb.

That afternoon, Matt, Bob, and I took a hike up Koz's Canyon.  Very quickly, we received a hit on one of our calls.  We set up and within minutes, Matt had 7 jakes at 35 yards.  One appeared to be the more dominant jake and did all the gobbling at us.  When he separated from the pack, Matt leveled his 12 guage on his head and collected his bird.  Fifty minutes later, the bird was on ice and we were again trekking back up Koz's Canyon.  We traveled a little further and received another gobble.  Bob was the only one carrying a gun.  We set up and for over an hour we had 4 different birds working us from 4 different directions.  However, we were unable to get any of them to commit.  As they all appeared to be moving off, we got up to follow one of them.  As we left our area, a hen started yelping from where another one of the toms were.  We set back up and tried to call her in.  Ten minutes later, Bob spied an approaching jake looking for company.  He dropped him at 35 yards.

Koz, Roy, Kent, and Jim arrived at Friday noon.  On Saturday morning, Jim and I had a tom answer our coyote howls down in Chris' Canyon.  We set up above the bird on top of a ridge.  A second tom was roosted down lower in the bottom.  They both answered my tree calls.  The lower tom flew down first and started approaching.  The second tom soon followed.  I could hear them both spitting and drumming all the way in to Jim.  He harvested a nice 3-year old at 25 yards -- his first-ever tom.  The time was 6:20 a.m.  Later Saturday morning, we spied a large adult displaying for a hen.  We moved in along an old creek bed to close the gap.  I had Luke and Kent sitting in front of me.  I felt Kent needed to be a little closer to the field edge and whispered to him to move 10 yards over to another tree.  When he reached the tree, he was able to spot the tom out in the field in full display.  As we were approaching the bird, he had also closed the distance on us.  Kent's shot rang out just as I was getting ready to start calling.  It sure caught me off guard!

Meanwhile, Koz and Jay had started out at the East Ground.  They set up in a hay field at the mouth of the canyon.  The birds were roosted on the canyon-side above them.  They had several hens fly down, gliding over the top of them in the process.  They landed out in the field about 70 yards out.  Jay and Koz held their ground and occasionally talked back to the hens.  Soon, the tactics interested 3 jakes that approached from the canyon-side.  One of them walked right into Jay's shooting lane and he squeezed the trigger.

Roy's only chance at squeezing the trigger came when he and Kent spied a coyote near the creek watching some deer ahead of them.  They quietly laid down and Roy started his mouse squeeks.  Soon the coyote was standing at full attention at 30 yards.  The 10 gauge spoke and the coyote lay still.

Luke and Koz had the turkey gods against them this year.  They had their opportunities, but came up empty.  We ended the trip with 6 birds and all had a good time.

Click here for the pictures.