Coming off three days of turkey hunting in central Nebraska. Never before have I seen so many turkeys in a place. This gave us the opportunity to try many approaches, and given the variety of weather conditions we faced, combined with sporadic hen behavior, I learned a lot.
With nighttime temperatures plummeting into the mid-20s, followed by cold mornings, the birds were still in large flocks. Hunting flocks of 60-80 birds that came off one roost was common. This meant the best hunting didn’t start until late morning, once the big flocks broke-up and started feeding into the hill country.
With unreceptive hens giving little attention to strutting toms, the toms seemed to lose interest in them and became more responsive to the calls later in the day. Most of the birds we called in were between 1:00-4:00 p.m., a time when many hunters are back at camp or have called it quits for the day. On our very first setup, 11 longbeards came to the call and only a few of those birds gobbled, most were silent.
In the brushy draws where the birds spent most of their time during the hot but very windy days, a lone hen decoy was effective. In some situations no decoys were used and this seemed to keep toms looking for the seductive hen sounds that drew them in.
A range of sounds worked during the course of the hunt, but the best calls were aluminum slates, glass slates, regular slates, box calls, raspy diaphragms and high-pitch diaphragms, respectively. In our three days of hunting we called in 33 toms and I filled my two tags; about half of those toms came in silent. Several hunters in camp experienced the same results.
This was part of a writer’s-hunt organized and sponsored by Cabela’s…there’s a reason they’ve been coming to this spot for the past six years! What impressed me the most was how aggressive you could be on these birds. We covered a lot of ground, continually calling until we found something that turned-on the toms. Sometimes, the louder and longer we called, the more aggressive the toms became until, eventually, they were driven to see what was making all those hen sounds.
Being aggressive and changing-up calls was the theme of this hunt. If a tom didn’t like one sound, hit him with another type of call or different sounds. On this hunt, being aggressive, covering ground and being in the field all day are what led to success.
I also got my first taste of branding cattle. I even got to ride, rope and drag calves to the iron! It rocked and really made me appreciate how easy the real cowboys make it look. Also got a taste of farming by riding in a $360,000 automated tractor that planted 20,000 corn seeds per acre. At a cost of 4 cents per seed, and given the 2,800 acres being planted in corn, you can do the math to figure out how much big-time farming really costs!
Great experiences, great people and a great hunt in the heartland of America…can’t wait to go back one day! Thanks to Cory Peterson and Keane Lowmiller of Hidden Valley Outfitters, in Arnold, Nebraska…and especially, to Joe Arterburn and Chuck Smock from Cabela’s for making this hunt possible! It was an honor to share hunting camp with these men.
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