2006
Multi-State Gobbler Hunt
Bowhunting:
|
Florida
| Texas | Nebraska | Illinois | Ohio | Missouri | South Dakota | Tennessee
To
This Hunt's Home Page
BOWHUNT
FOR THE RIO GRANDE
by
Robert Hoague
Turkey
Hunting With Billy Don
I am bowhunting at Billy
Don's
Wild
Horse Prairie Ranch in Burnet, Texas.
Apr 27 - Fat Belly
-- Long Beard
Russell drove to an area
over the hill from where the monster longbeard had roosted yesterday. It's
about 400 yards down the same very rough and bouncy riding ranch road I
was on. I popped up my blind 15 yards from the road and waited for daylight
-- a wait pleasantly spent listening to numerous gobbles ringing through
the treetops in every direction. When it seemed like hens would be on the
ground I called with the Woodhaven cherry slate. Several gobblers cranked
up answers. I shut up for awhile.
At 7:16 a hen walked in front
of my blind. The hen walked past me and turned uphill and disappeared in
some mesquite trees.
The two of us are overlooking
a valley and have quite a nice view of it.
Once it was gone I switched
to the Woodhaven Cooperhead mouth call. Two gobblers answered, one from
the front and the second from my right. I made some very soft calls on
the slate.
The next gobble to the front
was much louder. Seconds later a big fan caught my attention 100 yards
in front of the blind on the far side of the cactus patch. I picked up
my camera zoomed in on the gobbler as he dropped his strut. The camera's
time read 7:36 and the image it recorded was a big Tom with a huge belly.
Immediately, I cut at him with the cooperhead.
Without hesitation, he brought
it on. When he was about to clear the cactus I got a second pic and
set the camera down.
A large tree was 22 yards
from the blind and there was some bushes around it. He started around the
on the opposite side and I could see him through the brush. I drew.
When he stepped clear of
the last bush I put my pin on him. He was moving and I moved with him and
shot when my pin was on the vitals. A feather flew into the air and he
darted ahead a short distance and then casually walked away.
I checked my arrow and it
was totally clean. Two pieces of wing feathers lay on the ground where
my arrow gave him what Roy Keefer calls "a turkey hair cut."
It was 28 steps back to the
blind, a little further than I had thought in the heat of the moment. Normally
I take 1- to 12 yard shots and leading is not an issue, but at nearly 30
yards I needed a little windage.
Half an hour later a second
hen walked by the blind.
And shortly after a group
of wild hogs, a sow and some shuts, walked through the area.
Then
a group of rams came walking down the road and stopped and stared at the
blind for a while.
When
Russell picked me up at 11:00am we talked over what had happened and he
suggested I move to an area down the road half a mile where he had been
seeing longbeards regularly. And that's what we decided to do. TO
THE AFTERNOON HUNT...
To
This Hunt's Home Page
Billy Don Van Cleave
|
Billy Don Van Cleave's
Wild Horse Prairie Ranch
We are bowhunting Rio Grande
Wild Turkey with Billy Don. His ranch is the home of the Bowhunting.net
Annual Bowhunt in October. He has bowhunts for trophy bucks, does and wild
hogs. Plus Exotics: black buck, red stag, rams, aoudad and more.
Billy Don, P.O. Box 199,
Satin, TX 76685
Call: 254-749-6119
Fax: 254-546-2709
Email: bdvanc@aol.com
Web: Wild
Horse Prairie Ranch |
To
This Hunt's Home Page |
