Finally stumbled into a little success in the mountains of Southwest VA. Story below for those interested:
Last year me and a buddy made the drive up to SWVA to chase some public land turkeys. We were tagged out here in our home state and it's only a 2 hour drive to endless public land in VA. Sound easy, right? Wrong!
We covered some beautiful ground and never heard one gobble, so this season we decided to try again in a little different area.
Friday night we drove up and got settled in. Started Saturday morning by driving up to a large WMA with a little lake. In total we walked 11 miles that day with no luck. No tracks, no scratching, no gobbles, nothing. Beautiful habitat. Nice open hardwoods, steep ridges, etc.
We did a little driving around that afternoon and saw several strutting toms all on private land. We couldn't help but notice that they were all at lower elevations. Most of the public land is 3-4000 feet elevation and heavily forested. Very few clearings/fields. The trees up there don't even have leaves yet. The private land holding the turkeys was 1500-2200 feet elevation and usually close to a river or good sized creek. I believe we saw 5 different toms on that fairly short afternoon drive. There were turkeys around, just not way up on the top of the mountains.
The problem was that finding this type of habitat on public land is pretty much nonexistent. We had to do some serious looking. Finally ran across a piece on the map that looked right. Two pieces actually. So we decided to give that a try Sunday morning.
Sunday morning comes and we make our way to the public area to find both "access points" are really not accessible at all. The roads went back through private land and were heavily posted/gated and looked extremely sketchy. So off to plan B we went. Hopes were very low at this point.
We pull in at Plan B and as soon as we get out of the truck we hear a turkey gobble. It's about 7:30am at this point. After a quick celebration we decide to make our move. There is an extremely steep ridge you have to climb first thing to get up in there. I think that turkey could hear us walking in the woods and wanted to check it out. As we were about to top the ridge he gobbles below us and he couldn't have been more than 75 yards. At this point we haven't called to him at all. The issue is there is a thick wall of Great Laurel between us and him (Rhododendron maximum). It may as well be a brick wall, no way he could come through it. We finally get around it and set up and call, by this point it's 8:30 or so. He gobbled once at the call but never did commit, so as the morning continued we eased around this place to try and strike him again.
Finally, about 10:30 am while we are in the middle of a water break a turkey gobbles just below us on the ridge. We hurry to get setup and no sooner than we sit down three red heads pop up over the ridge. We let them continue to come in and it turned out to be 3 jakes. We were so frustrated that we had likely spent all morning with our hopes very high just for a group of gobbling jakes. We let them do their thing and decided to back out to continue on to the next piece of public. As we are backing out we bump a tom that had slipped in silent to see what all the commotion was. He never gobbled but he had heard our calling and heard those jakes gobbling, so I think he was coming up to that ridge to show them who the man was. Of course, with our luck, we found a way to screw that up! We continued to scout that afternoon and decided to return there Monday morning.
Monday morning we pull up and there are 3 trucks there? We hadn't seen a soul the day before. We talked to the guys in 2 trucks and they were brothers hunting together on the other side of the road from where we were going. The other truck was already gone and was hunting where we wanted to be. It's about a 2500 acre piece so we decided to go in there and keep our distance from him. On our walk in I see the other guy up there setting up his ground blind and decoy spread all out in the wide open during prime turkey wake up/gobbling time. If the turkeys were roosted on the hardwood ridge they would be able to see him for a mile. Sure enough, the tom gobbles twice on the roost up on the ridge. We get set up and hope to call him to us after fly down. Time goes by and we never do get the turkey to gobble. We end up hiking to the back of that 2500 acre piece and all around it to no avail. About 2pm we are making our way back on a tall ridge and we spot him....on the other side of the river!! I can only think he saw Mr Ground Blind flailing around in the field at first light so he decided to pitch down to the other side of the river. Monday was largely unsuccessful.
Tuesday morning we show back up and luckily none of our competition had gotten out of the bed. We were worried the turkey was going to pitch to the other side of the river again, but when he gobbled on the roost he was well within the public. He gobbled a total of 3 times. After fly down we called and never did get a response. In all of our searching this was the only turkey we had found on public land. There was no plan B. We decided to wait him out. At one point I even dozed off for about half an hour. Finally, at 10 am he gobbles at a crow about 200 yards below us. We call and get no response. A few minutes go by and a bearded hen walks within 10 feet of us. A few more minutes go by and we see another hen pop out 100 yards below. Then another hen. Then out steps Mr. Tom in full strut.
We need him to come up the hill a good ways to be within range. I would call to him and he refused to gobble, but he would go out of strut, stick his head up, and walk a little bit our way. Then after a few seconds he would remember that he had 3 real hens on the side of the hill and start to fade back down to them. When he did that I would call again. We played this game for half an hour, but he finally came in to 30 yards. All my buddy could see was the top of his fan when he was in strut, so he told me to call hard so he would stick up his head. I called hard and I saw his bright red head telescope up over the lip of the ridge. My buddy pulled the trigger and the rest is history. A fine Virginia gobbler taken at 30 yards on public lands.
We ended up walking 30 miles in 4 days of hunting all to find one singular huntable tom on public land. It is very tough hunting, but man is it rewarding when it comes together!
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