2011 Archery Turkey Hunt

This past weekend I took my son and some new ‘toys’ to go archery turkey hunting up in northern Arizona.  I picked up one of the over the counter archery turkey tags and went with high hopes that the wind would settle down a bit from the previous weekends.  

 I had a spot picked out where I wanted to camp, but unfortunately someone was already set up there.  It was where my dad and his friends had set up elk camp for many years back in the 80's.   I picked a spot a little further down the road and we went right to bed.  

Upon waking up we drove down the road we camped off of stopping occasionally listening for gobbles.  Luckily, we heard some as we neared the end of the road and a decent sized canyon.   I loaded up my new Mystery Ranch Crew Cab pack and quickly woke up Ryan from his sleeping bag in the back seat of the truck, got him dressed, and we were off.

Ryan dozing in the blind

Ryan and I

Me packing my Double Bull blind in my new MR Crew Cab pack

We set up above the gobbling turkeys and gave them some calls to which they responded.  The turkeys sounded like they were moving closer, but as the morning wore on four elk moved in downwind of us and spooked down off the ridge to where the turkeys were calling.  After that we didn’t hear much in the way of gobbles. 

Throughout the day we explored different parts of the unit, stopping often to do some calling and exploring.  We stopped for lunch and shot our bows as well.  Ryan was a trooper, going on our hikes and looking for turkeys.  We ended the night early at his request so we could go find a place to camp and eat dinner.  There is nothing like roasting hot dogs over a fire. 

Glassing for turkeys

Practicing with our bows

Better shot than me...

Cooking dinner

The second day started out similar to the first.  We heard gobbles close to the same location as the day before and we moved in on them.  This time I didn’t bring the blind as I figured we’d be dropping down into the canyon they were roosting along.  We dropped down into the canyon and in doing so spooked the bird that was on our side of the canyon, but the gobbler across the canyon was going crazy.  Hiking down in the canyon was fun, but soon Ryan wanted to get back to the truck so we took the next 'gentle' ridge up and followed an elk trail back to the top of the canyon.  We enjoyed a breakfast of champions back at the truck, chocolate donuts!

The rest of the day was spent exploring different parts of the unit and looking for turkeys.  Even though tired and not always wanting to leave the truck, Ryan followed me out into the woods to try and call in a turkey.  

I had a great time with Ryan and I believe he had a great time as well.  We didn't bag a bird, but I got to try out some new equipment for my much anticipated fall hunts and we spent some good time out in God's country.  Here are some other random pictures from the weekend...