The Mossy Oak Gobbler

Rick Ferlita and I with our 1st Morning FL Easterns

When chasing gobblers, it always seems like your last easy hunt was yesterday's.

Rick Ferlita and I were camped under a wild cherry tree late Friday morning, quietly chatting about our various experiences afield. We held post on the edge of a small green field situated between a creek bottom and planted pines. We'd started the hunt in the traditional manner, well before first light, in a cut-over where we'd jumped a gobbler and his hen the evening before.

With direction from our guide, we pinpointed several roost trees that bordered the gnarled, open terrain and discussed a plan on how to set up the next morning. Daybreak came with far fewer gobbles than expected. The starlit sky we left 12 hours earlier turned overcast, and the entire mood of the woods felt ill-suited for much activity - except for one distant gobbler that would respond to Rick's calls, the occasional crow, and the lonely howl of a coyote down by the river bottom.

It's never easy to determine when to make a move on a bird, but this one seemed primed for action. We lifted our decoys and hiked back to the main road to get a bead on where the bird had gone. Fast forward a couple miles of walking around impassable blocks of pines and several attempts to get in front of the animal, and we eventually abandoned the chase and elected set up shop on the aforementioned grass patch just to see what would happen late-morning.

And, you know, with turkey hunting there are so many variables in play – what call to use, how often to call, should we deploy decoys, should we use a jake decoy – it can quickly become paralysis by analysis. With gobblers - and all manners of game, for that matter - a little patience and being where they want to be is often the soundest strategy.

But patience is fragile. At quarter till eleven, we decided to give a few more yelps and work our way back to the truck. Save a lone hen that pecked around the patch for a few moments, the sit had been for naught. Rick struck a few notes on his box call, and a gobbler cut him off. He put down the call and flicked the safety off; there was no doubt this bird was on his way.

MO Prostaff with TNT Outdoor Explosion's Marty Fischer to my right

For the first time in the five years since its creation, members of Mossy Oak's Florida Prostaff team devised plans for a group hunt, and we descended upon 4,000 acres of gorgeous river bottom and rolling planted pines near Blountstown, FL in the Panhandle. Hosted by Southern Arrowhead Outfitters, the land was owned by the Atkins/Trammell families, old Florida names well-known in state politics. For several years, SAO has offered semi-guided archery hunts for deer and hogs, but this was only the second Spring where turkey have been hunted in recent times.

While Florida is synonymous with Osceola gobblers, those in the Panhandle are deemed to be Eastern birds which was fine by me. Neither Rick nor I had ever tagged a Sunshine State Eastern. And while there was no doubt the property was rife with turkey, six months of planning could not fend off the monsoon-like conditions that was about to pummel the state. That's the luck of things.

And while the camp was brimming with turkey hunting talent, it was also luck that Rick and me pulled each others' numbers out of a hat Thursday evening. Lucky, too, that we drew a block of woods on the high point of the property. A wet spring had flooded the river bottoms, and the turkey were moving up to get out of the water, and, possibly, the hordes of mosquitoes incumbent with such conditions.

Still, it's always hard to gauge how two people who've met only briefly would work together when turkey hunting. I'm a big proponent of the One Chief Theory. When I take someone out on my own time, I want to run the show; however, Rick makes his own beautiful box and scratch calls that he sells through his Cypress Creek brand. I quickly offered the reins to him, figuring I may learn a thing or two on this hunt. My inaction paid off at that gobble. Rick had won the coin-flip to decide who would shoot first, and I was more than excited to lend moral support and end this morning on a high note.

After five minutes or so, Rick whispered that he could see a tom enter the access road into the clearing...then another, then a third gobbler. We were primed for a double. I told him that when he shot, don't hop up, just yelp or cut to the survivors to see if I could tag one, as well. The three came in a line, not in a hurry, just ambling, heads down and beards a-draggin'.

The final gobbler was obviously the older animal as he finally broke rank and full-strutted between the other two right up to my jake decoy. Marty Fischer of TNT Outdoor Explosion had joined us in camp and explained the difficulty of getting footage like this on camera - the hours of film and effort it takes to produce a half-hour segment. It's a shame his equipment was not with us. The cinematography was perfect.

When the satellite gobblers cleared and the strutter de-poofed, Rick lowered the hammer, folding him at 10 yards. One bird immediately rocketed to greener, lead-free fields, while the now-abandoned survivor tossed up in the air before landing back in the field. It turned to run, but Rick hit that mouth call - a Gagging Yelp, I would describe it - which froze the gobbler long enough for me to fire a 3 1/2-inch load of #5 Winchester Supremes out of my Mossberg 835, crumpling him into the sod. 

Nervous about the 40-plus yard shot, I immediately leaped out of the blind and raced to the gobbler, later discovering my old and faded Mossy Oak Obsession hat caught in the cherry tree. Realizing it missing, I couldn't recall if I'd inadvertently tossed it aside in the excitement or the recoil had blown it back into the bushes. With two toms in hand, we had our first Florida Easterns. Words failing each of us, high-fives and back-slaps were about the only intelligible form of communication we could muster for ten solid minutes.

I had remarked earlier how quickly things could change with turkey hunting – the few miles of hiking, several hours of sitting, and desperate strategies were struck from memory as we celebrated back towards the truck. Each gobbler had 10 1/4-inch beards while Rick's tom sported a pair of 1 1/4-inch spurs that easily trumped my duo of 3/4-inchers, his clearly a three-year old with worn wingtips and a feather-less breast from strutting and breeding.

Our shooting for the weekend finished by the one-gobbler-per-person mandate, the next morning Rick and I teamed up with Kevin Faver from The Outdoor Show and Regional Manager of Florida's Mossy Oak Prostaff to try and get him a gobbler. We sat in a different section of property and heard a tom gobbling from the roost down towards the river. We advanced on him and called until around 30 - 45 minutes after daybreak when the winds picked up and the temperature quickly cooled, betraying the approach of thunderstorms from the Gulf. For the next two days it would downpour. Although those boys didn't give up all day every day, no one tagged another bird until Sunday morning.

We hurried back to the truck, and while Rick and Kevin decided to give it one last shot before the rains, I chose to rest on the tailgate, my balky back threatening to seize up after hours of sitting and traipsing the undulating terrain.

As I watched the clouds darken and listened to the thunder roll in, I couldn't help but think how much easier the hunt was yesterday.

(Thank you to Mossy Oak, SouthernArrowhead Outfitters, and everyone who participated in the hunt.)

Gear for the Tuesday Morning Jake

I know many of you have waited - breathlessly, in some cases - for me to divulge my list of equipment I used to bring that monster jake to bag last week. Well, wait no more!

If you recall, I performed limited calling and primarily used a slate. Specifically, my call of choice was a Quaker Boy Triple Threat. It may seem a little gimmicky, but I've long been a fan of those metallic surfaces for their high frequency and resistance to damp weather. It takes a while to properly prepare the surface and to find that "sweet spot," but if the birds are quiet and I'm trying to strike up a gobble, I find it gathers the most attention. On this last hunt, I struck the pot with a H.S. Strut Magic Wand with a carbon fiber tip for that extra resonance.

When a bird is in view, though, playing a slate is a gamble I'm not willing to play. Usually, I'll let the tom close the distance on his own. If he needs a little extra coaxing - as the tom did last Tuesday - a mouth call is the proper tool.

Mouth calls are intimidating to plenty of hunters. And for a number of hunters I've heard try them, they should be! In the future, I may approach the lectern and instruct the nuances of the single, double, and triple reeds, but not today. To yank that jake to the decoys last week, my call of choice was a raspy triple reed, a Primos Many Beards. I like this call - and triple reeds in general - for their versatility and raspy sound. Moreover, this call makes excellent purrs and other small noises that mimics content, feeding, and otherwise come-hither hens.

Which brings us to decoys. I usually carry up to six decoys, which is a lot, but I may set up in a spot where birds can come from multiple directions. Other times, I just like setting up that many. Regardless of manufacturer, all of them are light-weight collapsible foam, and I deploy at least one "feeding" model with two "stand-up" versions.

The coup de grace is, of course, the shotgun and ammo. I've used Winchester Supremes for years now with great confidence. They pattern well and hit like bricks. I vacillated between 4's and 6's for a couple years before meeting in the middle and settling on the 12 gauge, 3 1/2 inch magnums with 2 oz. of 5 shot offering. Combined with my Mossberg 835, it's a potent load on the gobbler and the shoulder.

Finally, the gun. I've hunted with that 835 for, oh, 7-8 years now, and it's done it's work when I've done mine. My one complaint is the fiber optic sights. The rear sight is much too loose, even pivoting a cool 35 degrees with no real way of tightening it down. I don't care for this, especially after missing that jake with the first shot. It's my fault because I hadn't patterned it before taking it to the woods. But, without sounding too braggadocios, something is amiss when I whiff a bird. I'm heading out Thursday to do the paperwork, and if it turns out the miss was the result of the shakes, I doubt you'll hear anymore about it. I suspect, though, this wasn't the case, and you can expect a post on patterning your gun sometime soon.

The shotgun itself is a delight for Florida hunting. A short barrel makes it portable in the swamps. The porting on the barrel eases the burden of those heavy loads. And when it's tuned in, the turkey choke causes the shot to fist-punch through the paper at 30 yards. It's even impressive farther out.

So there you go, my list of gear for that hunt. Odds are I'll switch everything up on coming hunts depending on where I go. Turkey hunters tend to have a ton of gear, and I doubt I've employed the same combination of calls and set-ups twice in a row. So, take this for what it's worth. At the very least, it may work busting a jake!

Magnums, For Better or Worse

This is not something I am proud of but it happened. Hunting a Georgia clay logging road one foggy morning several Aprils ago, I dropped my biggest gobbler at 80 steps. I had my dad come confirm it. If I’d realized he was that far, I would have not lowered the boom. As it was, the wide open terrain of clear-cut combined with the fog caused me to misjudge the range. And I was a touch antsy anyway. Two mornings prior, a bounding coyote spooked an inbound gobbler, and the following morning a gobbler spooked upon seeing my jake decoy. Such things happen with turkey hunting, agreed?

Well, this tom slowly eased down the road without a gobble or strut. My H.S. Strut Lil Deuce slate was working its magic once again. And I don’t know. Call it a fear that something else would go wrong or call it just plain bad judgment, but I decided he’d crawled within acceptable range.

80 yards, stone cold dead. Lucky. The big eastern sported an 11 ¼-inch beard and 1 ½-inch spurs on each red clay stained leg. Fortunate.

OK, I’m a little proud. Though this wasn’t the first tom laid low by the shotgun, this incident earned my Mossberg 835 - shooting Winchester Supreme No. 5’s in 3 ½ Magnum - a special place in my heart. Maybe I got a little cocky, though.

A couple years ago in Levy County, Florida, I had been calling to a bird all morning. No one had killed a gobbler on this property yet and I wanted to be the first. On the roost he gobbled at everything, and I expected him to pitch down into a little food plot to my left as I huddled under a dewy myrtle bush. Never really happens how you want. Instead, he settled in a cow pasture obscured from view by a cypress swamp and a row of palmettos.

For nearly two hours I slowly worked this bird my way. I was badly out of position and couldn’t redeploy or he’d surely peg me. My first glimpse of him was through a Frisbee-sized hole in the brush, his white head bobbing up and down with every gobble.

And there he stood, in that hole, 45 yards away, gobbling like crazy at my increasingly poor attempts at calling. All he had to do was move fifteen yards to my right and I’d have a clean shot, or maybe he’d see my dekes and come a-runnin’. I was badly unwound.

He almost made it. Through my peephole, I saw him begin to move in the favorable direction then stop, flip his wing and about-face, heading back from where he came. I just couldn’t take it anymore. When his head settled in the middle of the clearing – that ugly white head resembling a front post settled in the ghost ring of an aperture sight – I drew my fiber optic bead and squeezed the trigger. Hey, I have a 3 ½ mag. I can go Predator-era Jesse Ventura on him.

In a long career of making dumb shots on all manner of game, this was the worst. I hopped up and circled the palmettos in time to see him beat feet into the dark of the cypress.

I returned to my set-up shaking, feebly fumbling with a lighter to fire up a smoke, wholly disgusted with myself. I’m no rookie, for crying out loud. I knew better. This bird got the best of me, and through hubris only did I attempt a shot like that.

When my hunting partner arrived fifteen minutes later, I’d chiefed through half a pack and still quivered. I explained the story and showed him what I tried to shoot through. The vegetation looked like it’d been hit with a weed whacker, and I seriously doubt many, if any, pellets scooted past.

The 3 ½ magnum is a wonderful tool, but stupid it will make you if you let it. In one of my previous blogs I wrote that just because they sell guns that’ll shoot across a cow pasture doesn’t make it a good idea. Now you know where that statement comes from.

If you ask me, I will look you straight in the eye and tell you I prefer having my decoys set within 15 yards of me hoping the gobbler will correspond with plans. In the same vein of honesty, I will also assure you I will take just about any opportune shot presented.

You know how it goes. Only so many days of hunting. Chances are limited. Self-imposed pressure to perform. Both these above stories have one binding thread: getting too excited and feeling too empowered with my weapon. The magnum’s siren song sure is sweet to those lacking self-control.

I’m not here to tell you what’s right or wrong or what shot to take. By most measurements, both these shots were ethically questionable. If you don’t think ethics has anything to do with it, we could also use the words “responsible” or “practical” and maybe a few others. Luckily, neither of these birds were crippled and left to the coyotes.

I don’t like “what might have been’s.” Maybe if I’d let that Georgia gobbler get closer he would have spooked. Perhaps if I’d shown a bit more patience with the Osceola he could have slipped back around and in an unfiltered line of fire. I don’t know.

I do know I’ve learned my lesson. “No lead, no dead” is a fun campsite slogan, but in the field I’ll be taking concerted efforts to slow down, breathe and try not to make so much happen simply because I am running with the big gun.