| | What's new on Iowaz iowaz@swbell.net's "Photo Albums" pages Recently created and updated albums: | Copyright, for private/educational/personal use only. | - Lila Photo Collection 2005
- (Jul 20, 2005)
- Sheetz, Strayer and collateral surname photos.
File name indicates topic. One photo in a series is likely labeled. iowaz@hotmail.com - Album was created 2 years 1 month ago and modified 10 days ago
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| Copyright, for private/educational/personal use only. | - Sean Perch Walleye 2012 May20
- (May 20, 2012)
- Got out a couple of weeks ago with Darrin & Cody and we caught 30 perch and kept 24 that were between 9 & 12”. We also caught a catfish & a smallmouth bass. Cody snapped some photos while Darrin and I were filleting them out. Darrin and I got out on this past Sunday and picked up 15 walleye and 3 keeper perch. The walleye were between 15 & 21”. We also caught another catfish, a smallmouth bass and a pumpkinseed sunfish. Best day of walleye fishing I’ve ever had and as you will see from the pictures, a lot of good meat to eat!
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| Copyright, for private/educational/personal use only. | - Seam Turkey Opening 2012 April 16
- (Apr 16, 2012)
- The regular season for turkeys opened last weekend on Sunday. After a successful youth hunt, I wondered how the birds would be acting when I returned to the same area where Cody had filled his 2 tags the prior Sunday. After scouting on Saturday afternoon, I found the turkeys in a big group still and hanging in the same general area. I watched at least 50 turkeys fly up to roost on the adjoining property and set my blind in the low light at dusk. I wasn’t on the X where they were spending the majority of their time, but I hoped to be able to call a tom or two over to check me out close enough for a good shot opportunity. I arrived early on Sunday morning for opening day and was greeted to the sounds of gobbling and hen chatter from the roost area. I put out “Kutter” and 2 hen decoys and climbed into the Double Bull Blind to wait for the birds to fly down from their evening perches so I could begin enticing them my way. About the time I figured the birds had flown down from the roost, the gobbling ceased for the most part but turkeys began to filter out from the woods into the adjoining field. I called aggressively to the large group of turkeys and before long, they began to move my way. I was shielded by thick trees in the creek bottom 20 yards to my back and could only get fleeting glances of turkeys walking near the creek. All of a sudden a nice tom appeared to my left and he strutted with aggressive intentions toward my decoys. I noticed he was sporting a pretty long beard as he strutted directly to the face of Kutter while ignoring the hen decoys. I wish I had the video camera rolling during the sequence as he sized up Kutter and pushed up against him while making “fighting purr” sounds. I was experiencing a little anxiety as he did this because I didn’t want my decoy to get all beat up but the tom was too close to Kutter to shoot him without shooting both of them. The tom worked behind Kutter and finally when he cleared him to the back, left side the angle and timing was perfect to end the showdown with my Beretta Xtrema. At 12 yards, it was instant death and the show was certainly over for the time being. At the shot, several toms gobbled back ferociously and numerous hens spoke their discontent and I had so many turkeys around me, I chose to leave the dead gobbler laying next to Kutter. As I was waiting for things to settle down in the minutes after the shot, I called periodically and noticed a group of hens coming off the hillside in front of me with a nice tom in tow. They proceeded by me to my left at about 100 yards and never made any attempt to come my direction, however, the tom seemed very interested in my calls and decoys and made a turn my direction. Once he crested the hill and come in direct view, he went into full strut and slowly worked my way. He would strut then stop and look and move my way very methodically. He finally made it to the open pasture where I was setup and was about 50 yards out but seemed very nervous about coming any closer. I knew I could make the shot but held off as I felt confident he would come another 5 or 10 yards to make it a higher probability shot. I was wrong - he ended up continuing to strut and look while moving parallel and then moved down into creek bottom and joined the other turkeys. I’m guessing he was probably a little confused by the dead tom laying next to Kutter but who knows with turkeys what was going on in that pea brain of his? I spend the rest of the day pretty much striking out while cruising other areas trying to get a tom fired up. I returned to my original hunting area from the morning and glassed the whole group feeding in the same field there were in when I left. I watched them fly up to the same spot and then talked to the landowner on the way to my truck. He told me I should go ask the landowner for permission that owned the woods that butted up to the field the turkeys spent the day in so I that’s what I did. I was able to secure permission and immediately felt more confident that I could kill another tom having more area to work these birds the next day. So Monday morning I headed to the blind and a similar sequence played out with the birds coming to the adjoining field but this time I couldn’t pull a gobbler over to me. After working them for close to an hour, they slowly moved off in the direction they did the prior day so I headed for my truck and drove over to the other spot. I cruised through the woods and as I got closer to the field, I could see a tom strutting away with 13 hens loafing and feeding. I got as close as I could to the field edge (about 35 yards) and sat next to a tree. In the meantime, a hen began calling from the direction I had just walked in the woods. I’m not sure how I avoided spooking her or them, but I liked the situation of being between two groups of birds. As I watched the turkeys in the field, they began moving toward my location and I watched the tom breed a hen (I know, I felt like a perv). Within a few minutes, the hens started to get pretty close and the tom was hanging back about 10 yards. Then one of the hens through her head up and started clucking and moving towards me – uhoh, I’m going to get busted. Then all the hens were on guard and started clucking and the tom gobbled and strutted closer to the field edge. My gun was up but I had to move it a few degrees to get it in position. That was enough to really raise the alertness level of the turkeys and the tom came out of strut and put his head up nice and high. I knew it was going to be a bit of a poke at this point and it was now or never. With the pull of the trigger his feet dropped from under him and my season was over. Another very nice tom down and I was able to head back to Tri-Cities in time to get to coach my baseball team to a big victory that evening. Hard to beat that day! It’s been a great turkey season for my boys and me to say the least. Good luck to those chasing the long beards and I wish you the same success.
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| Copyright, for private/educational/personal use only. | - Spinner Mae
- (Feb 7, 2009)
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| Copyright, for private/educational/personal use only. | - Sean Turkey Youth Hunt Cody 2012 Apr 08
- (Apr 8, 2012)
- Sunday morning, we awoke to a heavy frost on the truck windshield and a crisp 28 degrees but clear and a slight breeze. I thought it would be a good day for gobbling but I was wrong. We headed to a new place but couldn’t get any gobblers fired up within ear shot on the property. We both decided to head to another spot where we had located birds while scouting. It was a good decision. When we made it to the new spot, we were too late for fly down but found some turkeys crossing the road and heading up the hill to an area we could hunt. I was conflicted on setting up in the creek bottom that I knew the turkeys liked to hang in and strut and ultimately decided to get out in front of the turkeys that we had seen already. We quickly set up the Double Bull and placed Kutter and the DSD hen and I began calling. It wasn’t long and I had hens responding and heading our direction. It ended up being a large group of hens with 2 jakes. As they were headed to us, I could see 2 mature toms strutting in the woods about 80 yards down the hill where I had initially considered setting the blind. As the hens and jakes worked to within 5 yards of the blind I asked Cody if he wanted to shoot the jakes or try to get the toms to come over. He made a gutsy decision to go for the toms! It become a test of patience as the toms ended up going back down in the creek bottom and working away from us. In the meantime, I realized I had left my cell phone and camera at the trailer we stayed the prior evening and Kyle had no way to get a hold of me. So, I decided to leave Cody in the blind and drive back to get the phone and camera since it was only about a mile down the road. As I was driving out, I saw all the turkeys that I thought were going to come up the hill to us hanging in the creek bottom where I originally considered setting up. I also noticed a tom by himself getting closer to the road and thought he looked like a candidate to being called in as he might have possibly got his butt kicked by the other 2 strutters hanging with all the hens. So I put the truck in reverse and parked and ran back to the blind and got on the calls. Sure enough, after a couple of series of calls, I got a thundering response and pretty soon every time I made a call, the tom cut me off with a booming gobble which is always a good sign they are pretty interested in what you have to say. This bird didn’t waste any time getting to us and Cody spotted him before I did. He was in full strut when I saw him and he made short work of getting to us. It was a sight to behold as the tom strutted up the hill to us with the sun backlighting his perfect fan. I let Cody decide when to take him and he made a great decision when I cut really loudly on the call and couldn’t get the tom to come out of strut, he took him just as he turned sideways at 12 yards and the gobbler’s legs dropped out from under him as Cody made a perfect head shot on him. The only disappointment I felt was not having the camera to video that kill. It was really that kind of hunt that you dream about. So one down now for Cody and still one more tag to fill. We opted to keep calling from our same position and wait out the turkeys to move up the hill to us. I really thought they eventually would come our way, but the clock was ticking. We had Easter dinner planned an hour south of us and needed to leave within the hour. After no responses, I cruised down the hill to check on the birds to see if they had made any progress our way. No such luck, they were still just loafing in the pasture near the creek. I decided this called for desperate measures and went back and grabbed the DSD hen and told Cody we were going to put the pressure on these birds and make something happen. So off we went to the turkeys. I noticed they were hanging out below a rolling hill side so we crawled to the edge of the lip and laid down prone and I stuck the hen decoy in front of us and broke out my mouth call and got after it with some aggressive calling. I was pretty excited with my rendition of the sluttiest hen I could reproduce but it had no effect on the 2 strutting tom’s who would not leave their 20+ lady friends. We were within 60 yards of the flock of turkeys and I was only asking the toms to break away 25 yards to check us out, but no luck. Then all of a sudden, a hen showed up at about 35 yards and I told Cody to get ready. The next thing that happened will go down as one of the craziest moments of turkey hunting I’ve ever experienced. All the turkeys were suddenly running single file towards us on our right side. I told Cody to get ready and pick out a red head and then there he was at 30 yards. I told Cody to shoot the tom right there and then boom, I watch the turkey continue to run with no evidence of being shot so I said shoot again and another boom and I watch the turkey fly off unscathed. I was blown away that he could miss that bird when out of the corner of my eye I saw a tom go down at the back end of the trail of turkeys. I was immediately relieved until I heard a voice yell out, “hey, do you have permission to hunt here?” WT??? I responded to the lady and gentlemen standing just below the hill that yes we certainly did and the feeling of holy crap that was a close call through no fault of ours took over. Apparently, the landowner had company show up for Easter and they decided it would be a good idea to walk out and check out the turkeys. WT??? Were they going to pet them or what? Talk about a ping pong of emotions! In retrospect, they kind of helped speed up the process of killing a turkey but it wasn’t the way we wanted it to go down. But, Cody wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and it was a very nice tom sporting a 9” beard and 1” spurs. So they pulled it off. 4 tags filled with very nice tom’s for my 2 boys. It will be tough to top this youth season and we had a great time hunting and spending the weekend together. And we even made Easter dinner on time. What a weekend!
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| Copyright, for private/educational/personal use only. | - Sean Turkey Youth Hunt Kyle 2012 Apr 07
- (Apr 7, 2012)
- The birds roosted in a different place than normal (seems to happen every year on the evening before) but my scouting indicated that the turkeys would still show up where I set the blinds the evening before in a driving snow storm. We awoke to 25 degree temp’s (2 degrees warmer than prior morning) and clear skies until we got to our hunting spot and the fog was thick and the ground covered in snow. So much for ideal conditions on the opening morning! The tom’s were very quiet as compared to the morning before with the weather conditions, but we stuck to the game plan. Once I was pretty certain the turkeys had left the roost, I got on the calls and it wasn’t long before the turkeys came running…literally to our setup. The hens skirted the blinds behind us along with a nice tom that I tried to get Cody to drop the back window and shoot, but I couldn’t convince him to do so and shortly thereafter a couple of gobblers were strutting to us. The pair of gobblers locked in on Kutter (Kyle’s strutting tom decoy) and came in front of the blind at 5 yards! Kyle raised his gun but not slowly as advised and one tom spooked and went back to his left but the other one walked slower and Kyle put the hammer on him at 12 yards! It was utter chaos after that with me trying to get Cody to shoot at another tom but it skirted just out of his comfort range and then all was quiet. Kyle had shot a dandy tom, probably the boss. It had 1 ¼” spurs and a 9 ½” beard and was around the 20# mark on weight but we didn’t weigh it to verify. The turkeys headed off to the woods and Kyle got cold so we left Cody to watch over the decoys and cover anything gobblers coming back to the area while Kyle and I went to find the flock. We managed to find the turkeys in the woods and set up and called in a jake that Kyle proceeded to spook with his constant moving and fidgeting. We worked around the birds and got in front of the flock and spotted a tom cresting a hill. We headed up the hill and I told Kyle to be ready to shoot and as we came over the top of the hill there were 5 toms within 25 yards. I told Kyle to pick out one and shoot which he did and it appeared he had connected but as we hurriedly approached the last place we saw the tom, it became evident that he had missed cleanly. He was bummed to say the least.
We headed back to catch up with Cody to find the farmer working in the pasture so we decided to pack up the blinds and decide our next move. After a call to another farmer to verify the turkeys were still around his place, we headed further north to hunt a different spot. We arrived at our new northern destination and quickly set up with Cody electing a spot by himself in the Double Bull blind and Kyle and I heading to a long-used permanent turkey blind structure. After an hour of no action, some hens started responding to my calls and some distant gobbles were heard and before long Kyle spotted 3 gobblers headed our way in the woods. They came in very fast and though Kyle and I had discussed how to mount his gun slowly and quietly, all bets were off when 2 of the toms charged in to face off with Kutter. The quick movement of Kyle’s gun with the gobblers at less than 10 yards spooked the back one but the front one locked in on Kutter and began a bob and weave square off with him. Kyle had stayed focused on the tom that was leaving but I got his attention to turn back to the one still in front of the blind which invoked another sudden movement from Kyle and he managed to spook that tom but not before he got off a shot at 10 yards that completely whiffed! Kyle calmly and coolly picked up his gun and chose a different window in the blind to shoot out of and with his 2nd shot drilled the fleeing tom in the back of the head and dropped him face first in the logging road. Kyle had managed to overcome multiple mistakes on this day to tag two nice toms. This tom sported an 8” beard with close to 1” spurs – an accommodating 2 year old bird to go along with his boss tom from earlier in the day. I called Cody on the radio who was more than a little frustrated that I had called away his gobblers that were hanging around behind his blind. Woops! So I snapped some pictures of Kyle with his gobbler and headed over to join Cody. It didn’t take long for the action to heat up and we had a jake come in from our right and though I tried to get Cody to take the shot at what I thought was the appropriate time, he did it on his own accord and proceeded to miss cleanly at 14 yards! Oh well, not long after that we had some hens and another jake stroll into our setup and once again Cody didn’t elect to shoot at my call since he was convinced the hens were too close and in the line of fire at about 20 yards. So he pulled the trigger on the jake at 37 yards and another clean miss! Frustration had set in big time for him and we ran out of time to work anymore birds. Kyle did add to Cody’s frustration by letting us know that a big tom was working his way to us when Cody shot and missed at the last jake. Great day for Kyle, not so great for Cody but he still had another day to hunt and the opportunity to redeem himself was still in the making. But not before Kyle rubbed it in later that evening that he was getting to sleep in the next morning. Gotta love little brothers! - Album was created 2 months ago and modified 2 months ago
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