The trip

Forgive me for not blogging about our trip sooner...but it was a very busy weekend here, and yesterday; I was exhausted! We arrived at the Condo-Minium about 8 p.m. Wednesday evening--just after a rainstorm dropped 2" of rain. The road up to the Condo is not maintained, and part of our way up the hill, we were driving uphill sideways. I kid you not.

This is a shot of the "condo." It's a 1962 camper. It might be 10 feet long. Inside, there's room for one person to stand and everyone else has to either sit, or be in bed. There's 2 bunks--one above the hitch, the other in the back of the camper above the table. The table will also come down and the benches can be pulled out as a bed. That's where Kev and I slept. Lynn slept in the front bunk. He mentioned that he felt like a "bean in a burrito" up there. Believe me, there wasn't room for him to roll over! Kev and I hunted together. Me with his shot gun him, with his bow. I couldn't use my shotgun because it's a trap gun and the pattern of the shot was too wide. You want a tight pattern when hunting turkeys. I got one around 11 that first morning, Thursday, our actual anniversary.

I hate having my picture taken, but Kev insisted that we keep a shot of me with the bird. So...here I am, in all my glory. It was a 20 yard shot. I wasn't nervous at all. Probably because I've shot critters before (although a turkey is lots smaller than a deer!)

Of course I had to carry out my own bird! He weighed between 15 and 20 lbs. His beard was 8 1/4 inches long and we forgot to measure his spurs, but I'm guess-timating that they were 3/4". Now, we had probably a half mile walk back to the camper, which wasn't bad at all, but my turkey bled out on the way back...and he got rather heavy. I had to switch shoulders a couple of times...upon arrival at camp, we discovered this:

Blood all over the seat of my pants where the turkey's head bumped against my seat all the way back. They were soaked and I had to wash up once we got back to camp. After lunch, we plucked "Tom" and put him on ice, took a nap, and went back out to see if Kev and Lynn could get a turkey.

When Kev called my turkey in, two other Tom's came in as well. Kev did get a shot off at one Tom, but it was an uphill shot and Kev's arrow went right between that turkey's legs! So, he still needed a turkey. Lynn decided to sit with us because he hadn't seen anything all morning long.

We went back out around 3 p.m. About 4 p.m., a thunderstorm blew in and it rained and thundered for the next several hours. They guys did call in two more turkeys, but they were "Jakes", or young Tom turkeys. They came in to the calls, but they were really most interested in "Bubba", the Tom decoy. One Jake strutted around that decoy, the other kept walking around in circles just staring at the decoy when all at once, he threw out his wing and SMACKED the decoy! Smacked him hard enough to knock "Bubba" down! It was hilarious. Since the guys wanted mature turkeys, they didn't even shoot at the Jakes, but let them strut away, secure in the knowledge that they taught "Bubba" a lesson or two.

There's more to share about our trip, but I'll save that for another post. But I will say that I had a great time on our Anniversary trip to the Condo.