Main Discussion Area > Shooting and Hunting
One-two-eight roost, opening day
chamookman:
Alright ! As usual Jdub, You put Me right next to You during the Hunt. Always fun to play the game, Glad Ya WON this one - two Thumbs up ! bob
Wolf Watcher:
JW: You are one of a kind and I am very glad I got to meet you here at my house! Your quick wit amazes me! I have a turkey permit this year. The turkeys are in the mountains and the roads are still closed so hope to give it a go after the first! My wife and I spent the day in the back country of the ranch yesterday and we must have seen at least a 1000 head of elk in several big herds. It's next to impossible to draw a bull tag but that doesn't mean we can't spend some time calling them. You are welcome to come with me to try to out wit some big old bulls next fall! Thanks for the story, it was great as usual. Joe
JW_Halverson:
Chamook, we all know the win was just a cherry on top. It's the chance to get in the game, a chance to be suited up and on the field that counts. And that's why I work so hard getting out the conservation message, if we, the people that hunt and fish don't work to conserve what we have, it's over folks.
We have to stand up to the anti's on one hand, and those with incredible resources that would wrap up the leases and access to keep the "unwashed masses" and the working class from having opportunity. We consciously refused to follow the European model where the landowner (our so-called betters, out Lords of the Manor House) owns the wildlife, and the commoners were poachers. Our concept of the wildlife being a public resource was a radical concept. It's had it's problems with overharvest and loss of populations, but we're learning better how to manage and conserve the resource.
Look at the wild turkey. Once it was scattered over much of North America, but after unlimited harvest and los of habitat, they were reduces to populations only in a few scattered places. Today, thru conservation efforts we have turkeys in 49 states here in the U.S. Places where they were never native, they are now exhibiting huntable populations!
Conservation can be as simple as pushing your best ethics when you have a conversation with friends and acquaintances. It's a grassroots thing, always has been, and always should be. I don't have kids and I never will. But the idea of your children not getting to enjoy a morning's overwhelming frustration while having a turkey hunt screwed up saddens me. Kids should get to experience these incredible lows and the inevitable highs that come along with them. So, I am another Don Quixote tilting at a windmill. There is no way someone as small and unimportant as me will change the world. But I might change a few people's minds, and they in turn change a few others. It's a theme that runs deep in this community here on Primitive Archer Magazine's Message Boards...passing it along.
nclonghunter:
JW, congrats on your bird and thanks for the excellent story.
I also found elk bugling and calling as addicting as turkey hunting. A lot more hiking and climbing with elk hunting, but when it is on and you are in it...Amazing!. Wish I was 20-30 years younger.
JW_Halverson:
I think I should explain the name of this roost site. I shot my first gobbler off this roost site about 13 years ago. The next spring I went up the morning before opening day and found that the area had been aggressively thinned and the trees stacked in great long wind rows. To say the least I stood there in the dark hours before dawn heartbroken. I just knew it was over and done for this roost site. I sat down to think about my next step when I heard a soft yelp in the trees below the ridgeline.
I stuck around that morning and tried counting the birds as they pitched off the roost. Impossible! Eventually, the birds began to work across a small bench and up the ridgeline towards a subdivision of million dollar yuppie McMansions. I picked out two small and skinny pines and counted every bird as it passed between. If they crossed back, I subtracted them. When they were all gone, I was beyond astounded. I counted 128 turkeys roosted on that site
Two days later the regional director of the South Dakota Wild Turkey Federation was up on this roost at my recommendation and he was floored! Randy nearly crapped himself at fly-down! He says that was one of the highest populated roosts he had ever seen in his career as a turkey fanatic. Granted, those were banner years when there was a gobbler every 250 yards up and down a ridgeline and dozens of subdominant birds skulking around between. This roost has had birds shot OUT OF THE TREES IN THE DARK, had deer hunters set treestands in their roosts, have been repeatedly hunted by some of the most inept turkey hunters around (myself included)...and yet it persists.
Two year old horndog with blunt spurs and a fat little 5" beard. Yummy, nummy, gobble gobble!
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