Black Hills Adventure 2010 with Cheetah

[Cheetah]

Hey gang, I'll be posting updates here throughout the next 5 days while I am hunting out here in the Black Hills.

Day 1. Saturday, 4/24/2010.

I just woke up, I can't sleep...

Arrived last night with no trouble, 8.5 hours on the road, about average for the trip out here. We saw tons of pheasants along the freeway on the way out. Tried taking photos, but the camera wouldn't focus quick enough on them. Turns out my uncle Brian bought a license, so there will be three of us now. It is raining here, some snow on the radar, windy. Should stop raining soon. We are going to wait for mid morning to go out.

Here are some photos from my uncle Neil's trip a week ago over near the Missouri River.

You can see the blind in the background of these photos that his hunting partner was in with all three of his kids.

More to come later...

[Cheetah]

The forecast for Rapid City was 45mph winds and rain til 1pm. Luckily the rain stopped about 8am and the wind in the hills was going to be much less. So we threw our gear in the car and hit the road.

Our first stop was just a small area that my uncles had hunted in the past. We made a decent loop through it, but didn't find any birds or even sign that they had been there. So we went back to the car and drove to another area that we had lots of past good luck in.

As we pulled into the parking area, there were two other guys in a red pickup. They gave us dirty looks and when we asked them which way they were going, their response was "we are hunting the whole area"... So they finally said which way they were going to start their walk, so we went the opposite after we gave them a good 10 minutes to get up the road. On the first ridge we stopped to call and just made a bunch of racket trying to get Brian's box call to work properly. A bird actually responded after like 10 minutes horrible calling. So we hustled to the ridge we thought he would cross over to get to us, and waited. Then we heard some bizarre noises from where we had started our first bit of calling. We heard it a few more times, and finally realized it was really bad coyote calling. Then we saw the two guys who said they were going one way, but apparently lied to us and now were cutting us off on the very first bird we got a response from. Great start to the day...

We packed up and decided to do our original plan, which we thought those other guys were doing. It was a long walk back to where we wanted to be, but after a couple miles and no birds responding and not much sign, we figured the birds might not have moved this far into the hills from their usual early spring areas. We decided to sit for a while up on a high hill to listen for any birds off in the distance. After a good half hour we made bets on which way the next bird would be. Three minutes later, I won the bet...

The bird was a couple ridges away, so we walked fast to get up to him before he disappeared on us. We got into position about 150 yards away on the opposite side of a cut, and by then we got about four gobbles out of him, then he shut up. We called for a good 10 minutes with no response, so we figured he must have walked away from us. I suggested we move up the ridge line to try to get higher and maybe ahead of him. When we got up there, I did some quick yelps and got a response. Our bird had walked all the way down and was going up the next ridge over. We got a bunch of good responses with all our calls, so we set up and tried to bring him in. It didn't take long, he was all by himself and apparently looking for the ladies. Brian set up on the right, I was on the left, and Neil was behind working his magic. The gobbler came right in to us and I could see him every so often from behind the rock pile about 20 yards in front of me. I saw him go straight for Brian, and I was waiting for him to shoot, but he didn't. Then the gobbler went about six feet to the left, got between some piles of rocks in front of me, and I figured I better take the shot. He went down and didn't even flop around. My shot was high, I think I flinched or something when I pulled the trigger, but I managed to get him with enough to put him down.

At this point it was about 3pm, plenty of time to keep hunting. We packed him up into Brian's backpack which was bigger than mine, and since it was so much easier to carry that way I said we should just keep hunting the rest of the day. That ended up resulting in a solid four miles of hauling this bird around, but it was worth it.

While we walked we ended up finding I think two other birds that responded to us, but then instantly walked away or shut up. As we worked down a long and high ridge line, I stopped to do some calling and instantly had a response from a gobbler just below us. We had Brian set up right where we were standing, and Neil and I backed up to call. After only a minute, Brian starts waving his hand and we have no clue what is going on. I crawled up to him and he said a big flock just walked over the ridge in front of us. Then he gets up and starts trying to get closer. The birds didn't care that we were calling to them, the one gobbler that was responding just kept getting further and further away.

The rest of the day was just a long nature walk. We didn't have any more birds respond and spotted a couple groups fast-walking through clearings to get to their roosting areas. When we reached the car near sunset we had birds gobbling just above the parking area, so we made plans to get on them first thing the next morning. We still have two more tags to fill.

[Cheetah]

Day 2. In progress.

We went out this morning and the birds were going insane around the parking area. It was hard to tell which hills they were all on, but we had Neil go up on one side and Brian and I went up the other main hill.

On our way up the hill it became evident that all the gobbling was really coming from where Neil went, it was just the echoes that made it sound like all the hills had birds. We thought we heard a couple ahead of us, but if we did they sure didn't gobble twice. We pressed on hoping to locate more birds further ahead and away from the car. Eventually we located some at the bottom of the last hill we planned to walk to. As we got about half way down the hillside, we ran into a fence, and private land... Realizing where we were, we circled around towards the car hoping to locate more birds.

From the top of the next ridge I heard some yelping ahead of us. We moved closer and found a flock of hens. There was one gobbler in the group responding, but not to us. We didn't even see them, but they were there, about 100-150 yards ahead just out of sight. We set up three times on this flock but they kept moving away, right towards the car. Eventually we arrived on the hill just above the car and heard the birds Neil was chasing on the other side of the valley. Our flock sounded like they were sitting right in the parking area...

We decided we didn't want to chase the birds up to where Neil was just in case he was already in position on the gobblers we heard on the hillside above. We walked only about 30 yards to the next rise on the main ridge line we were on, and I called a few times and Brian suddenly tells me to freeze. We were standing in the wide open with only a little sapling next to us. I was now Brian's cover.

I stood as still as I could while our flock of hens came up from the car to pay us a visit. It started with probably a dozen birds, some looked like jakes and came to about 50 yards with me standing there with my back to them calling like I was a hen just out of sight. I could turn my head enough to see a few of them, but we couldn't tell if they were actually jakes or just hens. Nothing was gobbling. A group of 4 or 5 hens were beating up on each other in their own little war. I joined in and the flock moved right into us. Then another dozen or so birds came up from the car and we had a huge flock right there on top of us with me standing in plain sight.

After a while the flock decided to meander away, but we thought we saw one fanning on the far side of it. So I went at it on the call again and they all came right back to us. I still hadn't been able to sit down... We had one big hen come up right behind me to check us out. Brian whispered that she was about 30 yards behind me. Then we had three more come in close, and I thought I saw a beard on one out of the corner of my eye, but couldn't be sure.

Nothing that walked within range for Brian was clearly a legal bird, even though we had easily 10 birds in shooting range. We let the flock walk off at that point, and a small group broke off and went to our left. When they were all out of sight or at least facing away I finally sat down after a good 30 minutes of standing in the open pretending to be a tree and calling the whole time.

The small group that went to our left we thing pulled one of the gobblers across the road to us. Nothing else was responding to us, but we could get this gobbler to sound off every so often, so we went to the top of the ridge to try to work up to this group of birds. We chased them a good half mile down the ridge, but they would never turn around, only keep going away. At the end of the ridge we tried sneaking as close as we could and Brian had their heads in view over a log at about 50 yards, but since he only had their heads and it was so far away he didn't shoot.

We were late for meeting Neil by now, so we went back to the car. He had been there, but then left, so we figured maybe he heard one nearby. Eventually he came walking down the road, he had been talking with the owner of the house just behind us. Turns out the guy recognized Brian's name through his work, and the guy gave us permission to hunt his land. The same land the gobblers were waging war on all morning! Neil even spent his morning just out of range of them on our side of the fence.

Here is Neil being followed by the landowner's dog barking at him the whole way back to the car.

Since we now had our plan for where to go that evening to catch those gobblers coming to roost, and a weather system was blowing in, we figured we would make a quick walk then go get lunch. The quick walk turned into probably two miles, and it started snowing as we went down the road. We were able to get two gobblers to respond to us, but they walked away chasing hens or something. The snow started to get pretty bad, so we called it quits and went back to the car.

Lunch is good, it's nap time now, we are going to hit the road in about an hour from now to get up on that private land and hopefully ambush some birds.

[bmc]

Good read so far Cheetah! Congrats on your bird! I'm looking forward to the rest of the story!

Brian

[DonBo]

Good job Josh! Sounds like plenty of action.

[Cheetah]

Day 2 ending:

We went back to set up on the roosting areas we had from the morning in hopes the birds would return. The temps dropped quite a bit and the wind picked up. The birds had other ideas... Brian and I had three walk up to us at 20 yards, possibly jakes, but we couldn't see any beards and they looked like hens. Neil saw nothing. Brian and I heard a few gobbles over the far side of the hill we were on, so we hoped they would be there in the morning.

Day 3: Monday morning.

Super cold today, temps dropped into the 20s last night, winds are 20+ mph. Daily high should get in the 40s.

Neil and I went out to the hill we tried roosting the birds on last night because we were hoping to find the ones Brian and I heard. Unfortunately they were nowhere to be found. We did get one to gobble twice to us, but it was a long ways off. We worked our way back off the hill and located a hen that was responding to us, but she wouldn't move, and we couldn't figure out if anything was with her. She was just below the spot Brian and I sat on the night before. As we started descending the hill Neil threw up his gun and a gobbler got up no more than 30 yards from us out of the boulders on the hillside. He saw it's head before it flew, but couldn't get a shot off.

We walked a long ways after that and didn't find any other birds that were active. We did run across a group of at least three hens, we think, that saw us first... Turned out to be the exact same spot where on Day 1 Brian had the big flock walk across the ridge in front of him. We came at it the opposite way this time though so I didn't realize where we were and wasn't alert.

We also found a nice matched set of 5x5 elk antlers! Neil spotted the first one, and as he picked it up I looked nearby for the other. I found it 10 or so yards up the hill from the first one. I forgot to mention earlier that on Day 2 while with Brian I found another elk shed with a massive base. Unfortunately it was broken in half before the elk dropped it, so I only have the bottom three tines, but it is still a massive base and extremely heavy. I'll post a picture of it later. I think I am going to try using it as the base for mounting my turkey fan. I think that would look cool.

Winds all day were hard, birds quiet, and most of the puddles stayed frozen all morning. Going to go back out in a little while after we get some food and rest. Probably will try to roost the birds on the same hill again tonight.

[sticknstring]

Good luck guys - those 'hills birds aren't the easiest, that's for sure. Cool find with the elk sheds - that made the trip!

[Cheetah]

Day 4: Tuesday

The weather forecast was perfect, though a little cold early on. It was about 22 degrees when we got there, but almost no wind. The birds were gobbling like crazy near the parking area. We moved on a spot that had multiple gobblers on it near where Brian and I had chased those birds on Sunday. We hiked up above them and got into position where we figured they would walk up on top of the ridge. We no more than sat down and heard the first bird on the ground and almost on top of us. Neil didn't have his gun up as the biggest bird appeared in front of him at just over 30 yards. Five more walked up behind it, it was legal shooting time, and they all had red heads, but we couldn't see their beards. The first we figured might have been a 2 year old with five smaller jakes. Neil held off and we let them walk, they went towards some yelping a few hills over. If I hadn't filled my tag yet, that first one would have been down for sure, but Neil is a little more picky than me.

More birds were gobbling the direction those jakes went, so we got up and moved fast in that direction. It seemed like they were walking away, and we soon had them locked down on one point of a ridge. We moved up quickly and had a nice steep cut to work up and the gobbler was on the other side. We set up to call him over the rise. Unfortunately a few deer were right with the turkeys, and they blew out of there and we figured it was all over. We called anyway, and after a lot of purring I was able to get one gobble out of him and it seemed like he was coming to us. He never showed though, and we snuck over the rise and couldn't find him. Apparently that was his goodbye gobble.

Most of the birds at this point were quiet again, so it was hard to decide what to do. We had already covered a lot of ground, about half of the big loop that we walked the first couple days, and it was still early in the morning. We sat for a while on the high ridge near where we found the pair of elk sheds. Early in the morning we had heard birds below this spot, so we were hoping the gobbler would make a mistake and let us know where he moved to. The best we got was a gobble way up the valley and on the far side. That's all we had though, so we went after them.

It took a while to locate the birds again, they were covering a lot of ground ahead of us and we had almost given up. After calling from a few smaller hills we got to I got a flock of hens and gobblers to respond from a couple hundred yards out. Unfortunately it was wide open between us, no way to move up to them, and unlikely they would come to us. We took the long way around to get to their side of the clearing, but the birds kept moving further back. We crossed two or three steep hills, some hens moved in really close to us, but the only gobbling we could get was moving parallel to us lower on the hills we were crossing. We finally got to where he stopped, and we moved in as close as we could. The gobbler then decided to go back the other way... At this point we were tired of the game, so we snuck straight at them. Neil spotted the flock about a hundred yards out, they should have seen us, but apparently were too busy feeding. There were red heads, but we couldn't see any long beards. We moved back and up above to where we thought they were going, but they never arrived.

We left for lunch after that and came back to a nearby spot we knew the birds crossed a clearing fairly often. Both of us were pretty tired, and instead of going all the way back to the house we came back with a couple decoys and stuck them in the grass while we slept in an old blind someone made out of old blown down tree parts. After a few hours some birds moved into hearing distance and there were a bunch of birds fighting that we couldn't see.

As we got closer to sunset we moved back closer to the parking area because we wanted to try to sit on the roosting spot from the other day in hopes they would come back. They did, about 20 minutes before sunset. The hens roosted about a hundred yards in front of us, just out of sight, but the gobbler waited until really late, probably after sunset, to come in to roost.

Day 5: Wednesday

This was our last chance, we were hunting the morning and then going home. Neil and I went back to the spot we roosted the birds the night before. We figured they would walk out the way they did to him a few days before, so we snuck in from that direction. As it usually works out, they went the opposite direction back towards the car... They also wanted nothing to do with our calling. We tried sneaking behind them, but could never get in close enough. Eventually we decided to try hooking around to get in front of them in hopes they would walk right up the road. We got there, but they crossed the road instead. I could see one nice gobbler strutting the back of the line of 10 or so birds. I figured I knew where they were going, right to the spot we had the six jakes on Tuesday morning.

We we ran the long way around up to get up there while the birds took their time feeding up the hill. We made it, too fast, the birds too forever! We were positioned behind some big boulders so we could move if they didn't go where we wanted. I stood up and looked behind us, and 40 yards out were four birds coming right at us. Somehow they didn't see me though, so I froze, and they kept coming. At least 12 birds came over the small rise and were all 30-40 yards out with me standing there frozen like the rock I was next to. All jakes and hens, nothing Neil wanted to shoot, and apparently not the same group of birds we were going after. They walked past finally and only a few minutes later our original group came into view, minus our gobbler... There was one big jake in the group, but only about 6 birds total, clearly less than before. Same group or different?

All of the birds were going the same general direction, so we packed up and went that way too. We found the six again, and since I wasn't so picky and it was our last couple hours of hunting, we tried sneaking them. Wide open grassy area, only some clumps of weeds and stumps, and there we went belly crawling across it in plain sight of the birds hoping we could get in front of wherever they were going. I made it only about 40 yards and heard some putting above me. I looked up to see some more turkeys skylined on the hill I was crawling to. They were putting at the six I wanted to go after, not me, so I froze and got my binoculars on them. It was a flock of 12 or 13 jakes. I figured they were jakes, but for the life of me I couldn't find a beard or any nubs of spurs on any of them at all. They all fed right down the hill to me as I laid in the wide open. They eventually got to about 15 yards in front of me, but even with my 10x binoculars I only ever saw that I thought might have been beards on two of them but then they would take a step and it would disappear. We let them walk in hopes of still having a chance at the original group we were chasing. We later decided to call these the pygmy jakes, late hatch birds from last spring most likely that flocked up together.

Unfortunately that was our last opportunity of our hunting trip, the wind picked up and the birds shut up. Looking back at the morning, it was probably our most productive for seeing numbers of birds. We figured we had three, maybe four different flocks, anywhere from 30 to 40 birds total. Unfortunately none were clearly mature gobblers, but it was a good sign for next spring. We'll be back.

Since I mentioned the elk sheds earlier, here are some photos to show the size comparison. The matching pair are laying funny, they do both have almost the same length when held up. The white one is almost as long as them, yet only half the antler. I held the base next to a Pepsi can to show it's size.

[Borch]

Very cool!

Man I miss being out there. Maybe next spring.

[Garvdog]

It's beautiful country out that way, that's for sure. We've made 2 trips out there with 3 guys the last couple years, and have only gotten 1 bird. I missed one this year, nice gobbler. Weather is a big factor hunting out there, can really shut the birds off. Nice job on the elk sheds, I hope to find some as well someday. Even though we've struggled with the birds out there, we've met some great people and the scenery itself is worth the trip.