The 2010 south zone of Florida’s spring turkey season opened on March 6th. This was my ninth year to hunt with Stacey Howell in the beautiful hammocks that surround thousands of acres of orange grove in Immokalee. I arrived early on Friday afternoon after a four and a half hour drive from Jacksonville and met my friend Bob Karel and Stacey at the gate to Gopher Ridge groves. We set out to do some scouting. Stacey uses game cameras to do some of his scouting and he has the pictures to prove it. The amount of game that lives in the area is amazing. Florida panther, black bear, bobcat, deer, hogs and the Osceola turkey. We found an area that had a lot of turkey tracks on a road . Stacey was not sure where the birds were roosting but we felt confident that the turkeys walked the road heading to the orange groves. I hunt using a small portable low profile ground blind. I was in an area where I could see pretty well to an open field on my right and the road on my left. Bob wanted to hunt a dry pond that is surrounded by a large field. He hunted there last year and had success. We looked the area over for sign and felt that the turkeys were regular visitors due to the nineteen images on Stacey’s camera. Bob built a blind at the base of a large bush and we were ready for the next morning’s hunt.
Bob and I checked into the Motel 82 and enjoyed our traditional happy hour traditions. We were without Robert Graham and my son Kyle this year and we remembered and toasted the many years of hunting turkeys that we have experienced. We ate dinner at the Seminole Indian Casino and returned to our rooms early, eager to hunt the birds that keep our passion for the spring season.
We arrived at the orange grove gate before 5:30 am on Saturday morning. There was a layer of frost and the temperature was in the mid thirties. The moon was setting and still cast a shadow on the ground. I was the first to be dropped off in the area where I planned to hunt. I put my medium weight jacket, wool beanie, gloves and neck gaiter on and settled in the pre dawn chill to wait to hear the woods awake. I heard a couple of gobbles from the roost far away. There was a loud diesel pump used to irrigate the orange trees running that may have drown out others. I did not make a call until about 6:30 am when I made some soft yelps with my David Halloran black aluminum pot. I waited for about ten minutes and ran another series of louder yelps. With in a minute there were nine jakes running down the road looking for the source of the call. These jakes were all the same size and all had six inch beards. They milled around for more than few minutes at less than five feet from my blind and gave me a feeling that I was about to be busted by the eighteen eyes looking for the hen. They ultimately made there way towards the orange groves. I was not using a decoy. I just decided not to this morning.
I heard a couple of gobbles come from the direction of the orange groves to my left. I eased out of my blind and slipped down the road to see if I could see anything. There were three hens walking down the road away from me at about sixty yards. I stepped back into the tree line and froze. The hens did not know I was there and I spotted a strutting gobbler step out from a side road to the left and follow the hens towards the orange grove. He was walking directly away from me never breaking strut. I shouldered my 12 gauge Benelli and started to close on him. I think one of the hens must have caught my movement and startled the strutting tom. He broke strut and offered his red head for a shot from behind at. I settled my True-Glo scope’s green illuminated reticle circle and pulled the trigger. A mature three year old gobbler was down and the hunt was complete. The bird had a 10.5” beard and 1” + spurs. I enjoyed spending the next hour enjoying the beauty of the morning and the orange groves while I waited for Stacey to pick me up. I saw over a dozen deer and watched a spotted fawn walk twenty yards from were I was sitting. Stacey had taken his 11 year old son Jayce to hunt and they told me their story of having four gobbling birds in range but not offering a clear shot through heavy brush for the young hunter. We picked up Bob and his “limb hanger” turkey up and shared our stories and took photos to record our recent experiences of “livin the hunt life”
My Second Osceola
The clock said 3:00 am. I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. The alarm was set for 4:30 and I could use some more shut eye. It does not work that way in turkey season. Your mind is going in so many directions as you think about the hunt. So many scenarios from previous hunts that you play over and over will never let you fall back to sleep. The clock said 4:00 and I said to heck with this. I showered, put on my Mossy Oak camo and grabbed my gear for the one hour drive to where I was hunting today. The temperature read fifty five degrees on the truck’s display and there was no wind or moon.
I was hunting a twenty acre clover field surrounded by planted pines. I made my way across the field with my decoys in the pitch black darkness. I found a good cover area in the timber facing north to set up that allowed good visibility of most of the entire field. I placed my B-Mobile strutting gobbler decoy with real beard and tail fan and two hens at about twenty yards out in the field. I had recent intel that the birds had gone to roost within a couple hundred yards of my set up and had been regular visitors to the field daily. As I stepped into the timber I heard the sound no turkey hunter wants to hear. A bird was roosted in the trees behind me and left the area with the familiar sound of wings on air.
It was still pretty early so I settled in and waited in anticipation for dawn. The bugs started to swarm so I broke out the Thermacell and took care of that. The woods started to wake up with the sounds of the song birds and whippoorwills around 7:00 am. I heard a gobble from a tree several hundred yards to my east. He gobbled twice. I did a series of tree yelps with my Halloran black aluminum pot and waited. About fifteen minutes later I did another series of calls to turkey’s who I assumed must be on the ground by now. Nothing responded. I called at fifteen minute intervals until a hen entered the field from the far north corner five or six hundred yards away. I glassed to see what may be in tow but she was a loner. I cranked up the volume of the call and she started heading my way. She covered the field and closed the distance in less than ten minutes. We carried on a conversation of purrs, clucks and light yelps until she grew uninterested and left the field to the south.
At 8:30 I was glassing the field and there was a gobbler standing in the east corner by a small pond. He was at full alert. He was at least one hundred and fifty yards away. I was praying he had not busted me when I was glassing. I sat perfectly still for what seemed like an eternity. I finally looked for him but he was not in the corner anymore. I finally located him about twenty yards closer into the field from where he was and still on high alert. I used my Primos mouth call to lightly yelp while purring on the Halloran slate. I do not know if it was the calling or the intruder in the clover field that finally got to the ole tom. He did a three quarter strut and lowered his head and came on a dead run towards B-Mobile and the hen decoys. I was shaking with anticipation as he closed the distance. The Benelli 12 gauge with the Tru-Glo optics and Remington #6 Hevishot stopped the charging bird. He barely flopped as the load of hot shot put his lights out at less than thirty yards. It was 8:45 and I was tagged out in Florida with my second Osceola. The bird had a ten inch beard and one inch spurs and I guessed him to be a two year old. I am blessed to be able to share my passion for hunting these noble birds. I love this time of year! Livin’ the Hunt Life.
