Its hard to explain why I enjoy talking to turkeys. I really should practice with humanoids more but its just not the same. Even my horrible audio files from years ago make me giggle when a big tom starts gobbling to my feeble calling attempts. After moving out of driving range to the ancestral hunting grounds I got lazy but it was time to get back in the saddle. I blocked out a four day weekend in May and headed to northeastern Washington to look for Merriam's turkeys:
I figured Hunters, WA sounded promising as a starting point. Should have done a little deeper research. Turns out the land I had meticulously scouted via Google Earth had all burned in a 60,000 acre fire from 2015... Ran into some morel hunters who were benefiting from the burn but nobody had seen any turkeys so Plan B was to keep driving until the trees turned green.
Bingo! Found some living Ponderosas and spent the next twenty minutes sniffing trees as I struggled up the ridge. Supposedly they smell of either vanilla or butterscotch but sometimes I get a little whiff of pineapple so further research is required. On the turkey front, things were not going very well. The first attempts at calling only brought in a couple hawks. Nobody holds a candle to my dying turkey impression...
Moving to the next patch of ground didn't really bring an improvement. I was getting a response from a very odd sounding bird that was matching my cadence but making me wish I had spent some time online listening to Merriam's calls. If that was the noise my call needed to make, it was going to be a very long weekend. Took a full ten minutes of stalking before I realized a crow was pranking me. This level of ineptitude leaves plenty of time to fail at getting a bumblebee in focus
With the last hour of daylight I picked a campsite on Lake Roosevelt and grabbed the fishing poles to try for some trout. I was serenaded by several toms from across the river and eventually a couple big fish got hungry. They had obviously been eating well and the fillets were salmon red. After an unusually success day of protein gathering, it was time to string the hammock and call it a night.
I figured Hunters, WA sounded promising as a starting point. Should have done a little deeper research. Turns out the land I had meticulously scouted via Google Earth had all burned in a 60,000 acre fire from 2015... Ran into some morel hunters who were benefiting from the burn but nobody had seen any turkeys so Plan B was to keep driving until the trees turned green.
Moving to the next patch of ground didn't really bring an improvement. I was getting a response from a very odd sounding bird that was matching my cadence but making me wish I had spent some time online listening to Merriam's calls. If that was the noise my call needed to make, it was going to be a very long weekend. Took a full ten minutes of stalking before I realized a crow was pranking me. This level of ineptitude leaves plenty of time to fail at getting a bumblebee in focus
and ponder how pissed off the gophers were when the snow melted.
The horseplay came to an end when I finally wandered into the range of a tom. My calling didn't enticed him enough to come check out my tail feathers so we circled around each other for a couple hours. At one point I had a hunch that he would work back along a skid road, which he did, but my ambush location was too far away and so the chase continued. On the plus side, I finally confirmed I was chasing a turkey. When we got to the top of the hill we settled into a more traditional hunt with me crouching behind a tree and him strutting back and forth. I get a kick out of hearing the "phooft" as they puff up but I was too close to risk any pictures. Even the evening light wasn't making him desperate enough to believe I was an attractive turkey but he eventually moved into a shallow ravine which gave me a chance to sneak within range.
Unfortunately for me, fortunately for him, a bearded hen had snuck into the same ravine and was the first legal bird I saw... In the excitement my brain wasn't processing that the target was half the size of the bird I had just spent two hours following. On the plus side, this was the tastiest bird I have ever brought home.
That was a good plan until about 2am when the rain started... Which provided good motivation for an early morning start to head back to the desert. I wanted to spend some time lounging in the Dry Falls/Sun Lakes area. Dry Falls Lake was the most scenic but covered in fly fisherman so I ended up on Deep Lake and loaded up on my trout allotment before finishing the long drive home. Already looking forward to returning next May!
Update: Forgot to share the weirdest part of the whole trip. When I got home on Saturday night I experienced the most blatant bout of cognitive dissonance. The turkey was hung underneath the sunroom to pluck the feathers while I was surrounded by the sounds of neighbors having their evening dinner parties. Probably a good thing there are lots of trees along the fence lines.