Come springtime every year, excitement runs through the blood of the 2.5 million turkey hunters across the country. When the snow melts and the grass turns green, men and women like us dust off our bows and shotguns and start to plan our first hunts of the year.
Wild turkeys are the second most sought after species to hunt in the United States, which can make it extremely challenging to find hunting land to pursue wild turkeys.
Because most of the public land is overrun with other hunters, the population of birds are minimal because the birds you do find are smart enough to stay away from hunters. On the flipside, private landowners often turn down the requests of hunters knocking on their doors for permission to hunt birds on their property.
So where can a turkey hunter go to find a great opportunity for a successful turkey hunt? This was the problem my husband Travis and I ran into this spring.
Travis and I were married in the mountains of Paradise Valley, Montana this February, and right after the wedding we traveled around while he guided snow goose hunts across the country. The long nights and early mornings of guiding hunts kept us preoccupied for the first couple months of being married.
When the guiding season was over, we moved into our first house as a married couple with our black lab (Kate) and new eight week old yellow lab puppy (Remmi). Between training a puppy, renovating our home, and getting caught up with our personal training business, we didn’t have the time to plan and scout for our annual spring turkey hunt.
After voicing our concerns to a friend of ours, he referred us to LandTrust - a website that links hunters with private hunting land access. We hadn’t heard of LandTrust before, and after browsing through the website, which is set up much like a vacation rental website, we decided on a Nebraska turkey hunt.
Nebraska is nicknamed the “turkey capital” of the United States. It is widely known for its density of turkeys and is the only state to hold three of the five turkey subspecies in the US - Merriams, Rios, and Easterns. Nebraska was a state we’d always dreamed of hunting for turkeys but had put it off due to lack of access to land and the ability to pre-scout for our hunt.
After doing our research and checking our dates of availability, we chose The Lovejoy Ranch outside of Valentine, Nebraska. We were sold after flipping through the photos and property descriptions of beautiful turkey habitat, a healthy population of turkeys, and little-to-no previous hunting pressure.
We booked our reservation within a couple of days, took a few days off work, packed up the truck with our pups and camping gear, and made the half a day’s drive to Valentine.
From the moment we arrived on the Lovejoy Ranch, we knew we were in good hands. Bob and Jody - the landowners - gave us a quick tour of the property, showed us where to set up camp, and helped us scout for turkeys the first night. Travis and I crawled into our sleeping bags the first night and discussed our plan for the morning, eagerly awaiting the 4:30am wake up call.
Our plan was to catch the birds before they flew out of the roost, but the birds flew down early and we missed our opportunity. Because we wanted to call the birds into a decoy, we settled for watching the birds from a distance and developed a plan of attack for the evening hunt.
After the turkeys had all disappeared for the day, we hiked in and set up a jake and hen decoy, camouflaged ourselves inside some trees, and waited a few hours for the birds to start making their way back to the roost for the night.
Around 7pm we heard the first gobble of the night and knew the birds were on their way. Travis began calling, and the toms started responding. About thirty minutes later, the first tom came running in, sized up our jake decoy, and began beating him up. Not but thirty seconds later, two more toms strutted in and joined in on the attack.
Due to the hunting pressure placed on the public land turkeys, in the past I always had to spot-and-stalk hunted turkeys. This LandTrust hunt at the Lovejoy Ranch was my first experience watching birds spit and drum their way into the decoys, and I have to say it got my blood pumping and my heart racing like no other turkey hunt before.
After watching the most mature tom beat up the decoy for twenty minutes, the bird finally stepped away from the decoy and Travis took his shot which dropped the tom in his tracks.
We walked up to the bird and reminisced at how frustrated the turkey was that the jake decoy didn’t fight him back. We took lots of great photos, hiked the bird back to the truck, and let the dogs out to celebrate our success. Kate was afraid of the turkey, but Remmi couldn’t help but let her teeth sink into the wings and get a mouth full of feathers - you can probably guess which one of these pups is our bird dog - haha!
By the end of the second day, Travis’ tag was punched and it was my turn. Without much time to scout the other parts of the property yet, we decided to return to the same spot in the morning.
Unfortunately, the turkeys took a different route that day, so around 9 am we packed up and headed back to camp to make some breakfast.
Back at camp as I was making us a couple sandwiches, a gobble in the trees startled us. Travis and I looked at each other wide-eyed and smiling, grabbed the decoys, and sprinted over to the edge of the treeline.
We made the quick adjustment to quietly sneak into the thicket, set up the hen decoy, sit up against some thick pine for cover, and begin lightly calling.
Sure enough, a strutting tom with a bright red head made his way into my only shooting lane after twenty minutes of coaxing him in. I took my shot just as the bird stepped into my only shooting lane at about 35 yards, and I watched the bird fly a few yards and hit the ground.
Adrenaline pumped through my blood as I walked up to my bird, and reality sank in. The previous season I had missed three opportunities before I finally harvested my turkey, and my confidence had been beat down. But making that clean one-shot-kill in the tight quarters with little time helped me regain the confidence I wanted to get back.
A few hours later, we met up with Bob and Jody at their private pond to fish for largemouth bass. We each caught a few and had a blast. Remmi took her first swim and Kate got to lick a couple of fish and play with her new cowdog friends.
To be able to share this hunt with my new husband meant the world to me. To have our pups there to camp and play with was so much fun. Cooking over the CampChef, having a beer at the end of the day, and reminiscing how outrageously cool our experiences had been over the last few days was everything.
None of this would have been possible without the help of LandTrust. This Montana-based company is paving the way for hunters like us to have the confidence of finding turkeys to hunt even when we don’t have time to scout public land or knock on doors. Not only that, but it is encouraging to know that anytime we make a reservation with LandTrust, we can eliminate the challenge of competing with other hunters by having the property to ourselves during our stay.
Story written by Maranda Hough
Houghoutdoors.com