Posted 8:36 pm Sunday, May 03, 2009
With Toms Still With Hens, Panhandle Turkey Hunting Success Difficult
FRANKLIN RANCH, GRAY COUNTY - Sometimes you just have to take what comes your way.
That's the way it was on the final day of a turkey hunt on the Gray County ranch.
The Texas Panhandle is not the place most hunters think of when thinking of spring turkey hunting. Better known for its pheasant, waterfowl and quail hunting, Panhandle turkey hunting is an underutilized commodity.
"There are places that have 600 or 700 birds ... they can cause problems for the landowners," said Duane Lucia, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wildlife biologist from Lubbock.
Lucia said the eastern side of the Panhandle has the best habitat and the most birds. The Franklin Ranch is about 25 miles southeast of Pampa in the eastern Panhandle. The 12,000-acre ranch is primarily sand flats covered in long grass and sage rising above the cottonwood bottom that runs adjacent to Cantonment Creek, a short tributary that eventually flows into the North Fork of the Red River.
Lucia said the Panhandle bottoms are where the bulk of turkeys can be found, however, there are places where habitat is so limited they are roosting on power lines. While the population in the bottoms appears to be strong, Lucia said there is a problem with loss of habitat because old cottonwoods that provide roost sites aren't being replaced in some cases.
JUST REWARD: Stephanie Cotton, Tyler, hunted four days in the Texas Panhandle to get this 2-year-old tom.
"The bulk of our landowners are livestock raisers and they don't care if they overgraze their bottoms so they don't have much regeneration of the cottonwoods. It is critical the first two or three years to protect them," he explained.
It was the fourth weekend of the North Zone Rio Grande season. In the Hill Country the hens were beginning to go to nests and the toms had become more vulnerable to calling. In this area of the Panhandle, where the last snow of the season was just about 10 days removed, every tom beyond jake status seemed to be courting a hen, and even some of the jakes had paired up.
The hunt started with disappointment Thursday with an old bird that gave himself away when he made one gobble and no more. It was a hot, 90-degree mid-afternoon when Stephanie Cotton and I heard it.
With no other option we dropped down into ankle-deep water and crossed a wetlands and yelped with the box call again. Nothing.
We were hunting the east or lake pasture, as it is known on the ranch, a mile or more east of the main bottom. We eased around the area, calling softly at times and as loudly as possible other times - still nothing.
It was possible that the tom was with the two hens he had been spotted with the afternoon before. Then, looking at it through the binoculars, it was clear this was a mature bird, 3, maybe 4 years old. His beard was like the bristles on a broom, thick, full and dragging the ground.
Frustrated by his silent act and sweltering in the heat, Cotton and I were walking back to the truck. The plan was to move to another location and start again, hoping for another, more cooperative bird.
Within sight of the truck, I yelped one last time. The gobbler erupted in the woods just in front of us. We jumped into the nearest cover we could find and started a conversation with the bird.
Responding to a call at that time of the day there was no doubt the old tom's hens had wandered off to feed.
Everything was working to perfection up to the point the bird was within 15 yards. At that point he wouldn't clear the brush for a shot. After a minute of two without a hen appearing, the tom realized something was wrong and left.
But not for long.
A round of aggressive calling pulled him back a second time, but this time he stayed just on the edge of shotgun range and mostly behind cover.
A round of aggressive calling pulled him back a second time, but this time he stayed just on the edge of shotgun range and mostly behind cover.
After two unsuccessful days, Cotton and I were back in the bottom Sunday morning for a final hunt. It was an overcast morning and the temperature was down considerably from the previous days. After a quick false start we moved quickly to a thicket near the south fence line.
A soft purr and tree yelp brought the response we were looking for. At least three toms responded with gobbles. A couple of hen yelps could be heard as well.
I worked the call again, keeping it soft and simple. Initially the gobbling seemed a long way off, but quickly it became louder and closer. When a hen flew down from a cottonwood a hundred yards away, it was clear the birds were closer than we ever imagined.
After the first bird flew down, the others followed. The toms gobbled, the hens yelped and I responded, but again not too much.
In this situation a tom isn't going to leave its hens for another. The alternative is to hope that a dominant hen will come to the call to chase the newcomer away. One boss hen was definitely agitated that another had moved into her territory. Her yelps got higher and raspier. I responded back, cutting her off a time or two. The plan worked and she brought the entire flock, six hens and four toms, our direction.
As soon as the birds cleared the low brush, Cotton had her shotgun up and off safety. Three of the four toms in a constant strut kept the group coming our way. With 10 sets of eyes looking our way, anything could go wrong in a heartbeat.
I backed off the box call so I didn't have to make a move that could be detected. What I didn't know was that Cotton had already picked out the tom with the longest beard and had the shotgun bead on its head.
Cotton is an experienced hunter - she has taken a 150-class free-ranging buck with a bow - but this was her first time to chase turkeys using just a call. I expected her to let them come a little closer, but after three days of frustration she wisely decided not to wait. When she felt the birds were within range, she pulled the trigger on the 12-gauge. The No. 6 Hevi-Shot dropped the 2-year-old bird with a 10-inch beard in its tracks.
