Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Adding Sable Trail Productions

It has been a while since I have been able to post, but we recently confirmed the addition of Sable Trail Productions to our video line up. Marc Watts, a former CNN correspondent is the owner of the company and has been in television his while career. He produces some excellent African hunting videos and should be a great contribution to the website.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Day Four Hunting Turkeys

Day four Susan decided to sleep in and Freddie and I headed out to face the turkeys on our own. I must admit I didn't have great expectations. I did take the video camera to make one last attempt at a turkey hunting video. We snuck up on a butte and found the turkeys several miles away and headed the other direction. Eventually they worked their way down to the opposite corner of the land we were hunting.

I turned to Fred and said "It's going to take some hiking, but if we're lucky we might be able to put a sneak on them." That was quite the understatement. Four hours later, we were still stalking the turkeys. After several stalks, sneaks and crawls, we were no closer to the turkeys. They had actually laid down in the middle of an open pasture. We were about to give in when the turkeys dusted themselves and headed toward a small creek. Unfortunately, Fred and I were over a mile from the turkeys, but after a little more convincing, we kicked it into high gear (or double timed it as Fred noted).

We snuck over above the turkeys and as we were peeking over a hill, one of the toms saw us at the same instant we saw him. His eyes nearly popped out of his head and he took to flight. Luckily Fred was ready and dropped him from the sky. To our surprise out popped gobbler #2. With a head shot from me, we had our turkeys! Success!

Another year of successful turkey hunting in Nebraska. How can you beat it.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Day Three of Nebraska

Day three of Nebraska was a real let down. Susan, Fred and I went out early again to find turkeys. The bordering property on which the turkeys roost had paid hunters that must have shown up that down. When we arrived after daybreak, we could see them across the river with wet legs up past their knees. They had obviously been across the river and scared the turkeys away from their roost. They were wearing no camoflauge, black shirts and jeans. Maybe they thought they would look like a turkey. I sure thought they were. Anyhow, the turkeys were spread out or gone. We set up in one spot with a Primos B-Mobile as far away from them as possible and began calling. We did have one gobbler sneak over to check us out, but he saw something he didn't like and faded into the trees. No more luck the rest of the morning. Maybe tomorrow.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Day Two of Chasing Gobblers

Day two of the search for gobblers did start out as well as day one, but we did find the turkeys without much searching. We were back on the same butte shortly after daylight and sure enough there they were below us. Back and forth we went trying to judge their next move. Susan made it out this morning and I decided to try to film her taking a turkey. After an hour or two of moving back and forth between spots they fed, we finally got set up and had a couple hens feeding by below us. Susan snuck down ten yards in front of my and I put the camera on the birds.

To my surprise out came 3 or 4 gobblers within 20 yards of Susan. I was whispering "Shoot, they're toms, shoot," but Susan was looking them over and trying to decide which one to take. After several tense seconds, she turned to me to ask which one? Unfortunately, the gobblers were a little close and scattered. No turkey on film today. I was ready to blow my cap (I know it's supposed to be fun), and Susan said, they didn't look big enough! Trophy hunting for turkeys!

My brother-in-law came in late the night before and we went out that afternoon, but no luck finding turkeys. We did see a few, but had no luck calling or tracking them down. I tried the new Primos B-Mobile decoy, but didn't get any turkeys in range close enough to see the decoy. I need to watch my Primos instructional turkey hunting videos to work on my calling. Mine must not be to great, cause the turkeys sure don't come running.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Back From Nebraska

Well we made it back from Nebraska. I'll fill you in on the turkey hunt over the next few days. Sorry I haven't posted for a few days, but the computer time was tough to find in NE.

The first morning, I got up nice and early and made it out to the turkey hunting spot by 5:30. I climbed straight up a big butte to see if there was any action and to my surprise there were turkeys right below me. Turkeys everywhere, probably 6 or 8 toms and jakes and 20 or so hens. Gobbling, fighting, raising a general ruckus. I wanted to get the hunt on film, so I held back and just filmed the maylay. What a site. I had several toms within 10 yards and the whole group within 40 yards at one time. They tried to climb the butte right beside me, but I had an orange flag sticking out of my vest (I discovered too late) and they would get close and start alarm putting. They eventually wandered off, but opening day was pretty exciting. I also got some decent footage, although it could have been better with a higher zoom camera.

My cameraman was worn out from the trip and the rugrat, so I had high hopes for day two and getting a turkey kill on film.