A little late on the report but I had an absolute blast during the two day youth hunt. So as some of you guys may know I been a long time volunteer with the San Diego chapter of the NWTF and have been a long time turkey hunter/addict. So for this year I was assigned to mentor two different hunts and organize the JAKE youth hunt for the winners from last summers JAKES day. On Saturday I mentored a young man and his father who have never heard or seen a turkey before. For that morning we were to hunt the Santa Ysabel Open space Preserve below Vulcan mountain right outside the town of Julien. Here's the play by play on how the hunts went.
Day1: I met up with the youth hunter and his father at 0400 at the gates of the preserve. We were assigned to hunt a spot where I hunted last years youth hunt and knew that we had everything against us to bag a bird. The spot was on the top of a steep ledge overlooking a creek bottom where all the turkeys roosted. The hill was choked with brush and it was just not the ideal spot for a gobbler to come up to our spot. We arrived at our parking location and chatted about turkey hunting for a little bit and what to expect. at about 0530 we walked over to a spot where I felt a turkey could possibly walk through to make it up on our side. As the horizon began to light up we heard a faint gobble off to our distance so I took out the coyote howler and right away I shock gobbled 9 different toms in various different locations.
I hot footed to our blind and set the decoys out and put up a portable blind in front of the hunter and his father. Soon after the entire creek bottom was blowing up with gobbles and the dreaded yelps of hens all over the place. Soon as I heard the hens fly down I began calling and mimicking the boss hen's raspy yelps and that began to driver her crazy. She began to make her way up the hill with three gobblers in tow but turned around after seeing how steep the hill was. The yelping and gobbling went on until about 0800 when everything and I mean everything died down and we didn't hear a peep from the birds.
We then decided to do a run and gun to see if we can strike up a gobble. We walked to several promising locations within our zone but with the strong wind we could not hear a gobble. As the day began to pass, we returned near our original location but found a spot where the terrain was less challenging. we walked over to a location where we could see a good amount of country and busted out a few loud cuts and yelps from my woodhaven real hen box call. Right away we were cut off with gobbles from two toms right below us. We scrambled under a big oak tree and began calling. We immediately got gobbles but we also got yelps from the boss hen we were calling to in the morning. I gave her a few cuts and yelps and soon we can hear the yelping and gobbling getting closer. We thought for sure that we would have turkey dinner when another group of hunters walked directly towards the turkeys as they were leaving their zone. The turkey then took off in different directions and that was the last we heard from those birds again.
We looked at the time and saw that we still had a hour and a half of shoot time left so we left the preserve to a public land spot that I have killed a number of birds before. We hunt the location until my calls got the attention of a unwanted sight seer on a nearby road who yelled at us to "shut the f up". Every time I made any turkey sounds this dbag would yell at us. So we decided to call it a day and hiked back to our vehicles.
It was a great hunt but disappointing t how rude some people are.
Day1: I met up with the youth hunter and his father at 0400 at the gates of the preserve. We were assigned to hunt a spot where I hunted last years youth hunt and knew that we had everything against us to bag a bird. The spot was on the top of a steep ledge overlooking a creek bottom where all the turkeys roosted. The hill was choked with brush and it was just not the ideal spot for a gobbler to come up to our spot. We arrived at our parking location and chatted about turkey hunting for a little bit and what to expect. at about 0530 we walked over to a spot where I felt a turkey could possibly walk through to make it up on our side. As the horizon began to light up we heard a faint gobble off to our distance so I took out the coyote howler and right away I shock gobbled 9 different toms in various different locations.
I hot footed to our blind and set the decoys out and put up a portable blind in front of the hunter and his father. Soon after the entire creek bottom was blowing up with gobbles and the dreaded yelps of hens all over the place. Soon as I heard the hens fly down I began calling and mimicking the boss hen's raspy yelps and that began to driver her crazy. She began to make her way up the hill with three gobblers in tow but turned around after seeing how steep the hill was. The yelping and gobbling went on until about 0800 when everything and I mean everything died down and we didn't hear a peep from the birds.
We then decided to do a run and gun to see if we can strike up a gobble. We walked to several promising locations within our zone but with the strong wind we could not hear a gobble. As the day began to pass, we returned near our original location but found a spot where the terrain was less challenging. we walked over to a location where we could see a good amount of country and busted out a few loud cuts and yelps from my woodhaven real hen box call. Right away we were cut off with gobbles from two toms right below us. We scrambled under a big oak tree and began calling. We immediately got gobbles but we also got yelps from the boss hen we were calling to in the morning. I gave her a few cuts and yelps and soon we can hear the yelping and gobbling getting closer. We thought for sure that we would have turkey dinner when another group of hunters walked directly towards the turkeys as they were leaving their zone. The turkey then took off in different directions and that was the last we heard from those birds again.
We looked at the time and saw that we still had a hour and a half of shoot time left so we left the preserve to a public land spot that I have killed a number of birds before. We hunt the location until my calls got the attention of a unwanted sight seer on a nearby road who yelled at us to "shut the f up". Every time I made any turkey sounds this dbag would yell at us. So we decided to call it a day and hiked back to our vehicles.
It was a great hunt but disappointing t how rude some people are.
