Doug Crabtree's Quest for the Grand Slam with the bow 2000.

To Florida in search of the Osceola

(March 19, 2000) I just got off the phone with Doug Crabtree. This time of the year his schedule is full of turkey hunting & calling seminars. (He did 4 this weekend at sport shows in Ohio.) Doug clued me in on his itinerary for his Spring 2000 wild turkey bowhunts. This year he is a man with a mission, he is attempting to harvest a Grand Slam during the Spring -- with a bow and arrow. Doug is coming here for the Rio Grande and will arrive Sunday, April 2.

(March 26, 2000) Doug Crabtree checked in and he's off to a good start. Today he competed in the Ohio Wild Turkey Calling Championship finals and won his 4th consecutive state championship. (He has 7 in all.) Tomorrow Doug begins his quest for the Grand Slam. He heads to Florida looking for an Osceola gobbler. Then he comes to my place and matches wits with the Rios on the Leon River. He will report in to me every day and we will follow this hunt from beginning to end. Join with me and wish Doug success.

(March 27, 2000) Doug arrived in Dade City, Florida at 1:30 pm today. Straight away he drove the 8 miles to the Green Swamp Management Area. This is a State Wildlife Management Area (public hunting) that is 38,000 acres of palmettos, big oak hammocks, clear cuts and good ol' Florida swamps. He walked and scouted for likely places. Eventually he saw 3 hens in a wood lot and talked to them. once he concluded there were no gobblers in the area Doug slipped out of there and kept walking and searching.
Late in the afternoon he found fresh tracks and followed them to an old pasture field and slipped along the edge. Bingo, he spied a gobbler and 3 hens on the opposite side of the field. They went in the woods about 20 minutes before dark and flew up.
Doug waited until it got good and dark and moved closer to visually investigate the immediate area where they had gone into the woods. He found a good place to set up in the morning.
I asked him how the weather was, he answered, "It's hot but the mosquitos aren't bad yet."
Heck, that's two pieces of good news.

(March 28, 2000) At 5:00am Doug was waiting at the gates of the Green Swamp management area. There were 2 vehicles in front of him. He was the 3rd vehicle in line. After checking in he went to yesterday's roost area. But one of the other hunters was already parked there. (That's pretty incredible, considering that the management area only takes 54 hunters a day and Doug's hunting area is 15,000 acres with 12 hunters assigned to it.)
Back to zero.
He drove to an area he had looked at yesterday. He got a gobbler moving toward him at 7:30. The gobbler had come over 400 yards when another hunter came up and spooked the gobbler. Around 11:00 Doug saw a gobbler in the palmettos 100 yards away. He talked to him with a few lost hen clucks. The gobbler immediately started toward him. Doug slipped into some palmettos and clucked again. The gobbler was 50 yards away when two hens opened up, cutting. The gobbler went for them. Doug called again but it was no go, the Tom wouldn't leave the hens.
Hunting is over at 1:00 in the state management area. Doug returned to his motel and left his bow there. He ate a quick lunch and headed for the deep woods with the intention of getting as far away as possible from the road and other hunters. In the late afternoon he was scouting a river bottom and located a lot of good fresh turkey sign -- gobbler scat, hen scat, tracks and dusting areas. He found several roost trees in a big oak hammock and has a spot picked out to set up. He figured he was at least a couple of miles from his truck so he followed the creek out to the road and mentally marked where he had to go into the woods. A hunter came by and gave him a ride to his truck, it was 3 miles.
In the morning Doug will be parked at the gate at 4:00am. Tomorrow, nobody will be ahead of him.

(March 29, 2000) (morning report)
This morning Doug was 1st in line. Before daylight he put up his blind and set his decoys out near the edge of the oak hammock he located yesterday. The sounds of wild turkeys waking up came drifting out of the hammock. When the time was right Doug did a fly down call and, immediately, a Gobbler and 10 hens flew down. The gobbler was quiet as he bread two of the hens. When he finished he started gobbling. Doug began cutting and 2 hens came right over and looked around, 8 yards away. The gobbler sounded off but wouldn't leave his hens. At 7:40 the gobbler moved off with the hens. Doug followed them to a big river bottom and cut called to pull him closer, but the bird would not leave the hens. At 11:30 Doug stopped following the group and started walking. As he went he cut to see if he could pick up a Tom. At 12:45 a gobbler answered, far away, but began closing the distance, screaming his brains out. But, hunting is over at 1:00. Doug had to leave him gobbling. This afternoon he is scouting the oak hammock again and will report to me after dark.
(March 29, 2000) (afternoon report) Doug returned to the oak hammock (a 45 minute walk at full tilt) and thoroughly checked the area where the birds were this morning, learning the lay of the land for tomorrow's hunt. He walked up on single hens 3 separate times. That is good news, they were alone and no gobbler was with them. Two hours before dark Doug hid in the palmettos near where the birds flew down this morning, watching and listening. He heard one turkey fly up.
Here is his plan for tomorrow: in the morning he will be at the oak hammock. He won't set up his blind, but will have it and set it up where he needs it. (He says the blind sets up in seconds.) Doug will start off with the Ol' Yeller sla-tek friction call. When the bird flies down he will switch to the diaphragm. If he hasn't heard anything by 9:00 he will move on to the area where he called in the gobbler just before 1:00. Doug is having a ball. He said, "All I'm looking for is the right 5 minutes."

(March 30, 2000) (morning & afternoon report)
Once again Doug was first in line at the check station and 45 minutes before daylight he was set up at the edge of the oak hammock and ready for wild turkey action. At 5:55 a Gobbler sounded off five times. At 6:10 nine hens flew down, they were in view, only 70 yards away. Next, the gobbler flew down from his nearby tree and strutted over to the hens. One hen separated herself from the group and the gobbler went to her and walked all over her back, breeding her. It took less than a minute. The hen moved away and the gobbler strutted around for several minutes. So far Doug had not called but now he clucked and purred on the Ol' Yeller to lure the hens over, which would bring the gobbler. It worked, a few came, but the gobbler stayed with the other hens 50 yards away, strutting. However, 50 yards was as close as the gobbler would get. On the 3-D range 50 yards is a shot that Doug has no problem with, but in a hunting situation, on a real gobbler, he did not shoot.
They birds started on their walk, just like they did yesterday. This time, Doug did not follow them. He started walking in the direction where he called up the other gobbler yesterday. Every 150 yards he called, using a variety of call sounds and calls. At 10:30 he was in the area where the screaming gobbler was. But today was a no go, nothing answered.
Doug checked out, ate and returned to scout. This time he returned to the area original area he wanted to hunt the first day (when another hunter beat him to it). He found a group of 6 turkeys feeding on grasshoppers in a long, narrow grassy field the Ashley Bay area. One was a gobbler. Doug saw them leave the grassy field and go into the woods. They flew up at 6:50.
In the morning Doug will be there. At 8:00 tonight the weather turned, the wind got up and it began sprinkling rain. Due to this weather change Doug thinks the turkeys will pitch out of the roost trees into the field. So before daylight he will be waiting in his blind with his jake and hen decoys set out.

(March 31, 2000) (morning & afternoon report)
First in the gate again and off to Ashley Bay and located the area where the turkeys had roosted the night before. Doug set the blind up in total darkness. At daylight the hens started talking. Doug kept quite, he wanted them to fly down and get in the field so they could see his decoys. One hem pitched out of the tree and landed in the field, she yelped and did the kee kee run. Two other hens answered her, further back in the woods, and flew down. They walked to the field and Doug started calling, clucking and old hen assembly yelping. The came to the decoys and picked around and chased grasshoppers -- 7 yards from Doug. They walked off across the field into another wood lot. Doug did excited hen calling and had no response. At 7:20 it started raining, hard. The downpour lasted an hour and a half. When the rain stopped Doug called to get a bird to answer, clucks and assembly yelps. A jake with a hen entered the field 65 yards away. They would not respond to calling. At 11:00 Doug broke the blind down and roamed, calling to see if he could get a response. Nothing happened. At 1:00 Doug packed up and went to the airport to fly home. (He has a permit to hunt the 4th season and will return then.)

| Wild Turkey Hunting Network | Hunt Main Page | Bowhunting.Net |