This year I had to miss the first day of turkey season (April 16th, 2016) because of an injury, but thankfully the next morning I woke up feeling well enough to go with my dad! I made my breakfast, put on a little makeup, packed my meals, and headed out the door in full camo ready to hit the woods. (Sort of)
I still wasn’t feeling my, best but I pushed through because I was determined to hunt. We had about an hour drive out to Winona WMA and I had the Rubicon’s seat warmer on high the whole time keeping my neck and back warm.
We
first walked out to a high point on the ridge before daylight to listen for a gobbler. We used a owl hooter at first light to try to get one to shock gobble but there was only silence in response.
As the sun began to rise we started doing a series of soft yelps imitating a female turkey (hen). Still no response.
My Beretta was ready for action but sadly the weather change had messed up the turkeys so even if they were in the area, they weren’t gobbling much that morning.
Because my neck and back injury limited how far I could walk without being in pain we hopped in the Jeep to cover more ground and moved on to the next location. We continued to stop and call in different areas to see if we could get one to gobble. This continued until around 2 p.m. and then we decided to call it a day and head home.
Even though we didn’t even hear a gobble, I would still call this hunt a success because I was able to spend quality time with my dad doing what we both love.
This is not how we normally turkey hunt, but we had to adapt since I was injured and couldn’t hike far.
Homegrown Harper 