We all have those bad days while hunting. Maybe you underdressed, get to your spot without something essential or it just seems like the universe is against you. Yet as hunters, we stick with it day after day and mile after mile because it’s what we love.
Like almost every hunter, I don’t like talking about my bad days. I don’t particularly want to relive the lows when I could focus on turning them into highs. However, I like to be transparent as a writer. I don’t like watching outdoors television and seeing what’s a setup hunt on a fenced-in parcel of land. I hate that because those guys give us false hope. Have you seen anything bigger than a 12-point buck in the last few years in West Virginia in person? Hell, I haven’t seen one with more than 8-points.
But before I get lost on a tirade about my disdain for certain outdoors media, I just wanted to make it clear that my goal is to be as open and honest with my readers as much as possible.
It’s with that in mind that I share with you my bad day from this past week. If you read my last column, you’d know that this is my first-year turkey hunting. If you didn’t read that column, now you know, too. I was incredibly excited to get into it — I did my due diligence by taking in as much media and tips from outdoors professionals I trust, scouted the land I was going to tackle, breaking it into chunks for weekly forays and bought the things I needed. On opening day, I went to Snake Hill and was on a gobbler for what seemed like an hour (It was actually around 10 minutes) but he wasn’t into my hen calls and disappeared over the ridge.
Naturally, I was hooked.
The next four days consisted of early mornings, double doses of coffee, fluctuating weather and an obsession over bagging that gobbler. I walked that ridge 6 hours a day, sitting and listening. Like a puzzle, I put the pieces together starting on the east end and ending on the west end. I even took it further down the side of the hill to the Cheat River hoping I’d catch him down there. But he only gobbled one other day, and no matter how hard I tried to pin him I couldn’t cut it. It happens.
After a weekend break, I was back at it Monday. I drove to Ritchie County to see if I could hit my second scouted spot, the place I normally hunt whitetail, a large, private tract. It’s perfect turkey habitat, and things looked bright. Ultimately, nothing showed. It was still a nice day to sit and wait, albeit chilly and slightly windy.
On Wednesday I decided to forego my planned trip to Coopers Rock and instead go back to Snake Hill. The weather was perfect — 55 degrees at sunrise, the barometric pressure was sitting just above 29.6 PSI, no rain in sight and I was the only one there — and I knew this would be a great chance to set up my decoys and call a bird in. I was dead on, and at roughly 6:30 a.m. a bird was gobbling just behind me, probably 50-100 yards away. I sweet-talked him for 10 minutes or so after adjusting because as soon as he popped over the hill I was hitting him.
All of a sudden, there was a loud chorus of dogs coming from the entrance to the big field. It sounded like coyotes were tearing up a smaller dog, but it kept going and was getting louder. About a minute after the dogs started, I could hear what sounded like a kid hooping and hollering — this is something I had heard about some people doing, but not to the point of what I was experiencing. This, of course, scared the gobbler away. After everything died down, so had the bird’s action and my good mood. I decided to move around Snake Hill at that point, thinking I could jump him if I circled him to a lower elevation where a small creek runs to the Cheat. That ended as you’re probably expecting: With no bird.
I love public land hunting, and I’ll defend it no matter how many bad experiences I have. I imagine a lot of West Virginia’s wildlife management areas are inundated with people on certain days, which will certainly bring idiots into the fold, too.
For example, this past week two brothers, a 7-year-old and a 20-year-old, were shot in Camp Creek State Forest in Mercer County by a high-powered rifle. There’s a lot wrong with this situation, the first being West Virginia should update the regulations and not allow rifles during the spring turkey season. The second problem is, how do you not recognize two people? I get that there’s no blaze orange requirement during turkey season nor should there be, but the fact that the shooter – a family acquaintance according to FOX 59 News – didn’t take the appropriate steps to identify what he was about to shoot is mind-blowing. Both juveniles are recovering, thank God, but things could have been much worse. It’s the second hunting accident this season, and we still have two weeks left.
Needless to say, I was pretty salty about those dogs and people messing up my hunt. But when I got home and read that story about the two brothers, I counted my blessing. Was my situation annoying? Yes, but at least it didn’t end with me getting shot by a moron with a quick trigger finger.
On Saturday morning, I was reminded why I do this, no matter what bad experience I have. I was sitting in the woods at the bottom of an old oak, watching the sunrise come up over the hills. Things began coming to life, and about five minutes after the sun broke the horizon I heard the unmistakable drumming of a ruffed grouse. I didn’t hear a turkey in the two hours I was out there, but it was still a wonderful morning listening to that little guy beating his chest while songbirds were filling the silence with their tunes. It might be hard for some people to understand why we keep going out day after day and mile after mile, but it’s what we love to do.
Stay safe out there, and good luck in the last half of the season.
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