to the Resline Hunting Podcast and we are live from Turkey Camp.
Sorry, man. I thought that was the recording from earlier. This is take two. So, it's all
good. I was like, that's pretty good, man. We couldn't figure this thing out. We're
in Turkey Camp and we're recording from a mobile podcast unit and we had some confusion
with the files. Dave's so good at that initial introduction that I thought it was a recording.
Well, I did mess up when we did play the recording of the last one and I didn't like the intro
so we were like, alright, we're not trying to try to get fancy here. It's almost 2 a.m.
We got to get up in a couple hours but we figured we would get in a little pre-hunt podcast.
So, we're going to kind of do each day and just kind of compile it all together and
then if you're watching on YouTube, you'll get the hunt as well as the podcast. So each
day we're going to record our hunt and then we're going to record, you know, the after
we're going to talk about what took place during the day. If we had any action or what
not but something tells me right about 6 a.m. they're going to be calling right down that
hill. Yeah, so we're kind of perched up on like a little flat and we're in between like
a couple ridges. So, I'm not sure what's going on with this spot in particular but it
seems like they roost down low and they come feed up the hill each day. Yeah, no, no, no,
that makes total sense because I haven't seen any roost on top of the hill. No, either
so on the back side of it they're kind of in the middle. Oh, there was a, yeah, they
were perched on that one tree last year. Well, maybe they got chaser. Yeah, we won't talk
about those trees because those are on private. But we can see them from where we were. Yeah,
and those are kind of low but there was a coyote chasing them around. So yeah, I think
they kind of got perched up in that tree on accident and there's about 80 of them. Our
plan for the morning, we're going to head up the hill. We're going to kind of take
our time working around the side and we're going to listen for a while. We're going to
take a little slow. We're going to take a note from Dirk's book and try to make this
hunt as easy as we can if we can. Yeah. Last week Dave went out with Mikey P and his feet,
I guess they did a lot of hiking about 30 miles. Yeah. They were exploring at the same time
as hunting but he has some horrendous blisters on his feet. So I'm not sure how he's going
to hold up. We can't even hike 30 miles here if we wanted to so that's a good thing. Yeah,
the unit that we're kind of in right now or the section that we're in is fairly small
and it's surrounded by private property. What's nice is that the terrain goes from a ridge
to a flat but going up and over can be kind of tricky but yes, my feet are hammered.
I think my boots are too tight and it's causing blisters. So I didn't have a problem last
year but I haven't hiked around at all so it's like the first 30 miles of the year that
I put in and it's only one foot. One foot, that's your long leg. My left one. But yeah,
so I actually grabbed a different pair of boots. I've had these boots for a while and
yeah, let's hope that the blisters don't get me bigger. Hopefully we're going to go
through this unscathed and everything is going to be great. We're going to hopefully have
some good footage tomorrow. I mean hopefully we have a good hunt overall. I don't care
about the footage. If we don't see a footage of something happening and we have a great
hunt, that's paramount to everything else. So if anything you're going to get us tromps
and around in the woods, you'll get footage of that and if we do shoot something and it's
fast and we can't get the cameras on, you're still going to see what happened. You might
not see the shot but you're definitely going to see the bird.
So yeah, don't forget too, we're in a zone where we can get two turkeys and we're committed
to trying to get this slam. So in this area they do have both species or at least a hybrid
of one. Well we're going to try to get. Hopefully we get a running with a couple different
ones and if we do then that'd be bad ass. Yeah, there's no better words of putting in
it. I'm trying to think of something small and I just had this goal with it. But yeah,
we're actually going to turn in. It's early and we've got to get up early. So yeah, hopefully
the next time you hear from us we had a successful hunt. Alright, stay tuned. Turkey hunt. And
this is actually our Dave's first day turkey hunting for the season. Yeah, last week Dave
went out with Mike. Yep. And I was going to go hunt for some Easterns but instead I went
plunking for some spring Chinook. You know, that was a good time. I mean, I actually
started really enjoying plunk fishing, plunking. I guess I call it plunk fishing. So plunking
is a style of fishing for salmon and it's really fun because you can just kick back
and relax almost like Lakefishing for trout. Oh nice. Just pass your line out and make
sure everything's going well in there with your plug or whatever bait you're using. And
then you just sit back and talk with your friends. I brought the solo stove out. We had
a little bonfire on the line. Oh nice. This guy next to us came over. We're just BSing
for seven or eight hours and the stove dies down and cools off quick. You dump out this
little tiny palm full of ashes. I mean it burns clean. I mean, it literally, there's
no ashes left. And he just hit the road. And yeah, that's what I did the last weekend.
So I just waited for this opportunity because I knew we were coming to this spot. Yep,
that's right. This is our secret squirrel spot. And man, did it produce? It produced major
in a major way. So full disclosure, we almost got three turkeys today. It was, oh my God,
it was, I could have shot two. I could have shot my second one. So we had a plan. Yeah,
Dave, Dave really could have took a shot on, on a bird that was coming up that we were
hoping would have kept on coming because right behind him was like the Mac daddy of the frickin
turkey woods. He had a rope for a beard and the thing was dragging on the ground. Like
it was, it was really, really big. If it wasn't on the ground, it was a half inch above the
ground. Yeah. It was touching the grass for sure. I mean, it was, you know, it wasn't
a very clean beard. It was dragging. Yeah, it was close. But, yeah, but before all that,
yeah, this morning was absolutely on fire. It was epic. Yeah, it was an all time hunt
this morning. I can believe, I can't believe what happened. We got, we did get a lot of
it on film. We went to our, we went to our, we took our normal route. Then we heard them
gobbling from our tent, you know, they're gobbling, they're singing morning in, in, in
seven directions, they're everywhere gobbling. We made a plan. We knew where we were going
to go. And we got to the spot. And the spot that I shot this burden is a spot we talked
about on like podcast one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, you know, like all of them
where I didn't take a shot at a bird. And I shot this bird in that same spot. And this
bird took the same route that that big tom took to come in that I didn't shoot in years
past. But today I was prepared. When I heard the drum and I knew what it was. And I knew
which direction he was coming from. And I got positioned. And when he came up, he fanned
right away. I had a small opening, like I could, I could have shot, but there was like
a little stump that might have blocked a lot of the shot. So he, he closed his fan. He
stepped up about three or four more feet wide in the open, put his fan back out. And I said,
good night. And I got all that on film. Like it happened within like 15 seconds. It was
like, and Dave's mine and probably even in my mind, it was like kind of slow motion.
But when I played it back, I was like, holy crap, I was like, perfect timing because I
actually didn't know which way the turkey was coming up. Because I was like another 25
yards back behind. And uphill. Yeah. And uphill. And I was focused on looking through
my camera, trying to get the film. And all of a sudden I heard the last drum. And I was
like, that is not where my camera is pointing. So it kind of pans to the right. And I just
get it fanning and it closes. And then takes a couple steps and I'm just zooming into it
and it fans up and again, then boom, we got it on film. It was nice. Yeah. It was the
coolest thing ever because I was calling it. And it was straight B line and like, right
for me, it was coming straight for me. Had no idea. San Dan was off to its right. And
he just got side swiped and it seriously back flipped through the air. Yeah. That was,
that was, it was great. The way it all came together. I mean, I don't think you could
write a script. I mean, I think everybody might say that when they when they have a successful
hunt. But this is, this is a little bit different. So we're hunting these turkeys on the side
of a, of a ridge. So it's either, it's like a big old dragon spine that kind of does like
this, almost like a J shape. If you were to walk the whole thing out and it goes up in
elevation as you go. We're not hunting these turkeys behind blinds or anything like that.
So it's more or less, we hear the, the Tom gobble, we do a setup, we could try to call
them in or we end up closing the distance on them and still call them in and bring them
the rest of the way up. This was, we both looked at each other. We kind of knew that
this Tom was either on the private property that's below us or it's kind of in between,
just because of how the gobble was. And we both looked at each other and was like, all
right, well, there's an opening up here. Let's just get to this opening. Let's drop in there
and just see what happens. Well, as we're calling, it took a while, but this Tom started coming
closer and closer and closer and closer and finally, you know, bam.
And there was, there was another one behind him down a little ways. Yeah. So the, the
private land we're talking about, it's not like we're on a fence line next to some farm
field. No.
There were hundreds of yards up a mountain and these valleys that a gobbles is, they
just echo. So you can't tell if it's across the valley, like we called one last year
and it was actually across the valley and it sounded like it was right on our side.
Yeah, it sounded super close. And then, but as we got to the opening, we could actually
go over and see the birds like, Oh, okay, those things are long ways away.
300 yards across the valley. Yeah. So it's not privately and like you would think, it's
just privately owned properties in between these state lands. This is, this is state
public land. Anybody can hunt here. Yeah.
So if you, if you have a shotgun, a way to get here and some sleeping, um, can, um,
preparations, you can come hunt here and, and, you know, there's nothing holding you back.
Yeah. So we're hunting the state land, but there
are private properties, mainly just homeowners with 20 acre lots and some larger, but nothing
really substantial close to us. And there's nothing stopping the turkeys from freely roaming
around. Yeah. Yep. Very true. And that's what happened
today. We were able to call this Tom up. We don't know if he was on private property.
It just, the sound came from that area. Um, but it came right up. Dave put a freaking
perfect shot on it, thing backflip through the air and tag.
And we got, we got a couple angle shots too, which is nice. Yeah. Um, our second,
we came back to camp, got everything situated. You know, I had watched a, a, um, a video
on the media, TV, on Netflix. I was, I was preparing for today yesterday. I was like,
those are Thursday night. I was watching. I was like, I'm going to watch this, this turkey
special because they usually do something cool. And they were hunting in like South Carolina
or something. And they actually skinned the turkey like a deer. You know, they started
at the neck. They pulled the feather in the skin downward. So that's what we did today.
And we were able to just skinned the whole bird, cut all the meat off basically and have just
a little, little carcass with the intestine still in it that we chucked. And everything
else came off. Um, and it was pretty clean. It wasn't like a, there was no big mess and
it was pretty simple. And I just watched it on the show. I was like, that's good. So
yeah, no, it was, it looked really clean. Like, yeah, it looked good. We went back out after
that and got up to the same spot, went up towards the top of the, of the ridge and called nothing
was happening. But when we went over the ridge, it was like Jurassic Park, you know, gobble
fest. Yeah. Once we got so Kirk, we, we had this thing. There's this area that's like,
once you cross it, you know, it's on like the birds just start going nuts. And right as
we're crossing the fence, these birds go nuts. And we were looking at each other like, dude,
what the heck? Kirk was right. We just crossed the fence and or this. It's like this old
cattle, like fence or something like that. It's a barbed wire, but it's on the ground.
Yeah, it's all down now. Yeah. It's so you could, you could snag your foot on it if you
weren't being careful. Yeah, if you weren't paying attention. But once we crossed it, it
was just like, holy smokes, the woods just fricking erupted. I mean, there is Tom's, we
were all pointing all over the place. Like, where do we go? So we seriously just like
went to the next, like little opening and sat down. We called two birds up that at that
point. We got them on film. Yep. And one, the J, he probably had like a three or four
inch beard. It was, yes, it was noticeable. I mean, you could, you could definitely see
it hanging off its chest. It was a good one behind that was just a monster. And before,
you know, when we sat down, we had agreed, I said, Dave, if one comes in, you shoot it.
If two come in, I'm sitting to his left and he's on my right side. I said, if two come
in, I'll take the left bird, you take the right bird. Yeah. So two were coming in and
they were, they were coming good. You know, if we had a decoy out or been in a little
different position, yeah. So he came around, took a look around. So they ain't nothing
here and walked right. And they just walked away. There was nothing too crazy about it.
And I believe that we chase those birds around the mountain. The rest of the day. Yeah, for
the rest of the day and end up finding out that they, once they left that area, when we
had them both coming in, just those two, they went down and up another ridge and they were
hand up. And there was no way we were going to get to them. We, we really worked those
birds because we had to call vigorously to break them off. Oh, it was intense. It was
intense. It was a lot of loud screeching. And they weren't coming. They weren't doing anything
with any like light calls or nothing like that. We really had to hit our calls super hard.
It had to be almost whiny and annoying. Yeah. To make those birds gobble and hear them to
sing, ear piercing. It was, it was ear piercing. Yeah. As the next, you have like, geez, man,
this is making my ears high pitch, you know, like you get that ear piercing sounds, right? Yeah.
So it's like that gets, hits that pitch and you're just like, oh my gosh. Right down the spine.
Yep. But they're cobbling and they're coming up and dang it. If we would have just brought a
decoy, yeah, we probably would have doubled up. And that would have been your second tag filled.
And then it would have been my first tag. For today and this year. Yeah, just the day. Yeah.
Yeah. So we're going to be back. We're going to hunt in the morning. Yep. And then we're going to
head out. But if we don't tag out tomorrow, we're going to be back. Yeah, that's right.
We'll be definitely back in the turkey woods. We don't know exactly where we're going to go yet.
Only because Cameron, a friend of the show, he's going to be coming out turkey hunting with us.
He's actually leaving the state in January. He's heading to Texas, him and his wife are moving. So
I've been talking about bringing him out hunting. He's new to Washington state. And, you know,
what a good way to get him out having turkey hunting. He's actually a turkey hunter. So.
Maybe we'll learn something from him. Yeah. The nice thing about next week is the weather's
going to be a lot different. Well, at least on, excuse me, on this side of the mountains,
it's supposed to be like 70 something degrees. And it was, it's in the 30s at night. Like it was
everything was frozen outside. It's cold. It's cold. So we got doubled up sleeping bags and
everything were. Yeah. Puffy's we got puffy's on. So we're sleeping in right here. So. Yeah.
Yeah. Next week. Well, next week, hopefully it stays in the high 40s at night. But the
the weather during the day is going to be nicer. And it did get a little chilly today when the
cloud cover came in. But it could be a totally different game next week, man. It could be
lights out. It could be intense because today was we had opportunities. I mean, obviously we
filled a tag. You know, the ridge line boys are on on the board with the bird. And we almost
doubled up almost twice because we had another set. We didn't film this part. It was kind of
intense because I was kind of just really running and gunning. Trying to get to these birds. And
that's how I found out that they're hand up. Because as we would call, as we would close the
distance and call, they would actually just start scooting back away. Like they wanted nothing to
do with us. And I was like, what is going on? Well, come to find out they they were like a part of
eight toms in about 12 to 13 hands. They're all over the place. Yeah, I was like, oh, okay.
That makes sense. I didn't boog her them out. I actually caught them fighting. And the
hens like fighting too. And they just walked up the side of the mountain. Well, this evening,
we heard one working back down the hillside. Yep. So tomorrow morning, we're going to try to cut
them off and hopefully we can make it happen. That's right. All right, stay tuned. We'll get
some more action here in the morning. All right, everybody. Good night.