Turkey Double

Scouting didn’t go as planned on the day before season opened. We were unsuccessful roosting any birds in the evening and morale for opening morning was pretty low. Our only play was to head back to an area we’d driven through around noon where we had seen a few birds moving through the trees. We figured we’d work one of the two-tracks out in the morning darkness and see if we could get lucky and hear a bird on the limb. It wasn’t a great plan, but seemed to be our only option.

Luck was with us, a tom started gobbling across the canyon in the gray light. We worked one of the ridges out to get close to him, set out some decoys and did some real light calling. Ten minutes later while he was still in his tree gobbling, two other gobblers came screaming into our setup and met with a quick end. Austin and I stood there in disbelief looking down at two mature Merriam’s gobblers realizing that our 2019 Arizona turkey hunt was over just like that.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from turkey hunting – It’s better to be lucky than good.