Join us as Fred Lutger, David Mills and Robert Hoague go for the Grand Slam this Spring. Our plan is to begin in Florida in mid March and move on to Nebraska, Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio and Tennessee. Look for the daily updates, lots of on the spot pictures, and plenty of video for BowTube.com as the hunt progresses.
April 23 Turkey Hunt With Rick Philippi By Robert Hoague
Apr 26, 2008 - 7:10:46 AM
I arrived at Rick Philippi's home at 4:00pm on Tuesday and we shoved off for his ranch a t 5:30. On of the highlifhts, for me, about this particular trip is the stop at Braums to get a chocolate yogart in a waffle cone. It's good stuff and we don't have Braums any place close to where I live.
The next mroning we went to one of Rick's favorite turkey hunting locations. He had the blind already set up. Rick stuck his taxidermy mounted jake and hen in the ground and we got inside the blind to wait until daylight ... and some gobbles.
Daylight came. No gobbles.
A lone hen walked in our general direction but changed directions and soon disappeared in the trees.
Still no gobbles.
We hung in until 10:15. A few days ago Rick had seen dozens of wild turkeys and a bunch of strutters right where we were, but it didn't happen this morning.
Rick's wife Cathy cooked up a tasty breakfast and we all ate. Then Rick and I went looking for gobblers.
For transportation we used Rick's new Bad Boy Buggy. I have to tell you this is the best hunting transportation I've ever seen. It's an Electric 4WD ATV. When it starts it makes no noise. None. And with the exception of the tires turning on the ground it doesn't make any noise when it's moving either. Absolutely no engine or motor noise. It is powerful too. And has good ground
clearance, with mud grip tires and is able to handle steep grades, rocky terrain and deep mud. Wow.
Also, the Bad Boy Buggy is rigged out to carry plenty of gear -- in front, in back and on the top. I've heard about them but never rode in one before. A very impressive hunting tool.
As we drove we stopped on high spots and terrain changes and called. Not a single gobble at any stop.
Later that afternoon we returned to our original location, believing that we would get afternoon action. As the afternoon passed dark cloud cover rolled in. And it got windy. And more windy. Soon rain drops began to fall.
At this point we didn't have to worry about having any turkeys come to our decoys. If we did see any they would be high tailing it to get to their roost before the storm.
We pulled out and walked to Bad Boy. On the way it started to rain.
A bad storm came through north Texas that evening and night. The weather news reported winds up to 80 mph. And there was plenty of thunder and lightning.
I started to update the web site via my Verizon internet card and something glitched up and only 9% transmitted. When I tried over and over for the next two hours the transmittal was between 9% and 16%. It just was not going to put up the page. So I took out chunks of the page's code and finally got it to upload. Although the front page was missing its Menu and a few other parts, at least the page was viewable.
