Turkey Hunting in Quantico

Last night I got off the plane from Cleveland and drove right to Quantico and camped out in the Hunter Parking until 4:15 this morning.

At 4:45 the window rolled up and I had the choice between 14A and 17B as I was the second person in line for the morning. Not sure where the other guy came from but he was headed to 14A and I did not want to have to think about it. I was talking with someone there and he gave me a suggestion to hunt a certain section of 17B that was inside of a large fence around it.

I headed right there, pulled inside the fence and pulled over. I sat in the truck for about 10 minutes and let the light rain shower pass over. I got out of my truck and pulled on my camo and walked 50 feet when I heard the very first gobble. For the next two hours we traded conversation. I would yelp and he would gobble! There were times he was 70 yards away just hammer gobbling and others he would be farther. It was cat and mouse and he won. At 8am he shut completely and I waited him out for an hour and with not a peep I headed out to check out the power lines running across the back of the area.

I did not hear a peep in the 30 minutes I was walking around and decided that I would head back, drive by a couple of other areas that I thought were worth looking at for deer season in the fall and head out.

As I came back the old boy was just inside the fence and I pulled in again and tried to circle wide around him and get in about 100 yards and then lightly yelped and chirped for the next 2 hours until noon. Nothing! All in all the greatest day of hunting I have had in Quantico. This bird is only going to be killed by someone who can remain dead quiet and ambush him and maybe someone pushing him by aggressively calling from the other side so he runs into a trap. This bird is one of the biggest turkeys that I have ever seen in the wild and ambushing him is still going to be a tremendous accomplishment. Hopefully he will be there on wednesday, and if I am really lucky I will get another shot at him!

Brandon and I are headed out to hunt with Dennis Campbell in Charlottesville at a little honey hole he has picked out. Hopefully Brandon will be able to score on his very first turkey! I will be filming the hunt to place up on the blog!