Friday, May 8, 2015

Trip Report: Surf and Turf 3/2/15 - 3/3/15

Sorry for the delayed trip report guys. I has been a busy week. This is my trip report from last weekend. It was a busy one, and I covered a lot of ground.

Turkey season opened in my state on May 1st, so as usual I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. I haven’t had much luck the past few years. I have been largely trying to hunt turkey in a large area of public forest land where I had noticed turkeys roosting. Unfortunately, my experience in the area over the past few years has lead me to believe that while they roost there, they don’t land in that section of the forest. I’ve seen them on nearby roads, in people’s yards, but not in the forest itself. So, I did some research by looking over available maps, and I discovered a large open area not too far from my hunting spot. I figured that it may be the location where the turkeys go during the day. I decided to check it out.

I knew that the open area was along one of the tributaries to the Vernooy Kill. SO, I started out on a ridge in the forest, and then followed smaller streams down the mountain in the hopes that they would converge into that particular branch.

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I started out early in the morning while hunting was still allowed. Because of that I put on my blaze orange vest. I care less about getting a turkey than I do about not getting shot.

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As a side note, for some reason there just don’t seem to be any normally sized blaze orange vests. The one I wore is actually a Junior’s size M vest on which I just had to enlarge the chest area. It still leaves plenty of room for a puffy jacket underneath.

It was nice to follow the streams. The weather was pretty warm that day, and having ready access to water was nice.

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By mid morning I arrived at my destination, which turned out to be a marsh. It was largely what I expected. In these areas virtually every open area in the woods is either man made or a marsh of some sort. My hope was that it would be tried than it was, but no luck.

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The area didn’t look too promising for turkey, but I figured I would explore it anyway. It quickly became clear that the marsh was the result of beaver activity.

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The only sign of turkey I found was a single spot of hen scat. Not promising at all, but a potentially good trapping area, even though a lot of the sign was old.

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I spent the afternoon looking for a camping site as well as an area I could hunt in the morning, even though my hopes weren’t high. Eventually I set up for the night. I had my tent with me, but didn’t use it. It wasn’t raining, and when hunting I like to be a mobile and close to my surroundings as possible.

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The night was warm and uneventful. I got up before sunrise and set up in a location I had scouted the day before. It didn’t have any sign, but at least it offered good lines of sight.

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I hunted for a few hours without luck, and then headed out of the forest. My hunting set up was pretty much the same as last year, except for the call, which I will discuss in a separate post. I had plans to meet up later in the day with my friend Rich so we can do some fishing. I kept bushwhacking east until I intersected a trail, which I then followed back out to the west. It allowed me to get out of the woods in only a few hours.

With the hunting portion done, and now joined by Rich, we made our way down to the river.

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While I was hanging out and resting from a river crossing, Rich hooked one on a Czech nymph set up.

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In the evening I had some luck as well.

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So, yeah, a very busy weekend. I’ve tried to keep the trip report as short as possible, so I had to leave out a lot of the pictures I took, but I hope you enjoyed it.

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