Miracles In Montana

Welcome to the Limbhanger Turkey Hunting Podcast. Turkey season is officially over for us but that doesn't mean we can't still talk about it! This week we're recapping the second leg of our Montana trip. If you'd like to hear part 1, head on over to the Southern Ground Hunting Podcast feed and take a listen.

The guys had a heck of a time on this episode just reliving the hunt. This was the type of trip that absolutely felt like it fell into place about as perfect as you could ever ask for. We hope you have a great time reliving it with us.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Limb Hangar Turkey Hunt podcast, brought to you by Grounded Brand and their new impact 2.0 Turkey vest. Get grounded@groundedbrand.com. The limb Hangar Turkey Hunt Podcast strives to bring opinions and discussions from all aspects of the Turkey hunt community, from legendary Turkey hunters who hunted in military fatigues to the modern day hunters embracing technology while maintaining traditions passed along for generations.

All are welcome at this roundtable conversation about one of the wet creatures in North America, wild Turkey. Y'all stick around. It's gonna be a great show

and welcome to another episode of the Lemon Hanger Podcast. Tonight we have a very special guest from I won't say where he is at in Tennessee. I'll leave that. But Jacob Bliss. Jacob, good to have you here tonight. Good to be here. Got Mr. [00:01:00] Joey Bell, the Reverend, how's going? The reverend, I don't know what to call you Parker, but you're a handsome fellow.

That's sultry voice. Sweet. The sweet tones of Parker McDonald. Oh man, you guys are like the all-Star team. Like I think everybody else in in the Southeast that's following this podcast or Southern Ground podcast, it's probably sitting back thinking, my gosh, I wish I'd have went with those dudes to Montana.

Geez, y'all nailed it. It was fun. It sounded like it. As a spoiler alert, and we really haven't talked about an outline for this podcast, but you guys put out a really good story on the road on the Southern Ground Podcast channel. So y'all did that live going down the road and that was kill number one.

So I don't know, I dunno if you guys wanna touch that tonight, but. Parker, you want to touch on it just a little bit? We haven't told the story on the Limb Hanger podcast at all because Yeah. We had already recorded Limb Hanger's podcast for that particular week, and, [00:02:00] but we hadn't recorded the Southern Ground Podcast, so we were like let's just throw a Turkey episode up there.

And and we got to tell, we got to tell the story. But Joey said something in that in that first episode, he said he ended it by saying something similar to this if we kill one, we were, we had just had this great hunt and we were on our way to go hunt this public area. And Joey said something like, if we kill one Turkey, I think all of us would be just over the moon excited.

If we killed two turkeys. Wow. What a trip. How much better could it get? And if by some miracle we kill three more turkeys, this trip couldn't have been any better. Joey said something like that. And we, you gotta understand, we were all like on cloud nine at that moment with a belly full of calf fries Rocky Mountain Oysters stop out a que of tss.

Yeah. Yeah. And so like some of the things that were coming out of her mouth I felt like as I re-listened to it, I'm thinking about man, that's, [00:03:00] it felt like listening to myself if I were like intoxicated. Cuz I think we were all intoxicated on turkeys at that moment. And so I'm not gonna spoil it, but miracles happened.

That was like part one too. Yeah. That was part two. Exactly. There's a part two on the trip. And I just wanted to say this trip for me, we, we have. There's special Turkey hunts. There's every Turkey hunt is really special, especially even the unsuccessful ones are as well, but we remember those ones that are successful.

This one was like times a billion. It was almost like a different experience from a regular Turkey hunt. Just the whole trip to Montana. I think in a lot of ways it has to do with the setting. You guys can probably agree. There's not a much prettier place to, to, to hunt, just to be, to exist.

There's not a better place to just look out the window of your car but then get to hunt, do what you love and hunt turkeys like, golly. That [00:04:00] setting is just and it's proven itself by how terrible Miriam's gobble is like. The gobble is so goofy, but the setting is so great, and it's like the setting just far outweighs the gole to me like that.

And they're just fun. They're fun to hunt. It's always a blast going in and hunting these turkeys, even though their gobble is goofy. They gobble a lot and so it makes it a lot more fun. Yeah. And they're pretty, yeah, they're pretty, I don't know. I don't know if it would be the same as if a, say a small Osceola, like a little bitty Osceola, gobble, gobbler was out there in that same setting.

Wonder if it'd be different. I wonder how many people would really travel out west and hunt 'em out there. With the, except, if they didn't look like a Miriam's, apparently it's only the boys from the southeast that go up there and hunt 'em anyway. Yeah. No kidding. It really is.

Everybody you run out, run into out there is that way. I gotta tell you guys though, Adam and some crazy Cajun [00:05:00] oilfield. Yeah, I'm sure you know this, Adam, because you got to see the pictures. These two fellas right here are some fine models behind a Turkey. Just I keep looking at these pictures and I'm like, of Joey Bell.

Joey looks like if there was a stock photo of a guy killing turkeys, Joey would be that. It's just like this very professional glowing smile. It looks like the sun shines brighter in his pictures. He smiles like he means it when he does turkeys. He does. We've talked about that before. That's one of my big pet peeves, like when people just have this stoned face when they kill a Turkey is They had to go kill that Turkey and that they'd rather be at home with their wife mowing the yard.

Like they don't even look like they're having a good time at all. Like Catman is, I'm gonna call him the freak out right now. Catman is just like that. Like when he kills a Turkey, you're like, he, it's just stone cold, just looking just straight at the camera looking into your soul [00:06:00] like a mugshot.

It's so funny. I can't do it, man. Joey can't even sit his butt down when somebody else is trying to kill a Turkey. He's so excited. Oh, I've seen that. Joey's just up running the shooting hasn't even stopped. And Joey's running out there telling ya, when you shooting cheap shells, you just go run after turkeys.

That's just what, that's just all there is to it. Joey, I was I was listening to the. To the audio or watching the rewatching, the video of that particular hunt. And it's super funny cuz you can, obviously once I handed the camera to Jacob, it was like all over and it wasn't Jacob's fault, it was just the situation.

It's just shaky. But you can hear everything and I hear you like shuffling around and get up and I'm like, Joey, sit down, watch out. And then you hear two more shots. That's the second time this season. I about got shot by somebody else that was shooting a Turkey. I about ran across Luke's gun barrel, right?

Oh man. That's about as scared as I've ever been. And [00:07:00] then don't worry, Joey, I ran in front of Luke's gun Barrel the second time, and I took that out like I videoed that hunt. And he was like, please, dad, do not put that in that video. Please do not put that in video. But I did. I just got up and started running, you know what you did.

And then, there's a, there's another fun clip that I'm, I don't know if I'm gonna post it yet, but I'm eventually going to Joey's Indian War cry after he killed his last bird. It was just like, oh my goodness. It was awesome. Was it the last one? Yeah. Was it the last one? It was the last one, yeah.

So he couldn't wipe Joey smile off his face after that one. That's something. I don't think he could have wiped a smile off any of our faces right then. Like we were just No. That was the most excited I think I've ever been for somebody. I'm always super excited when somebody else shoots one. I don't think I've ever been that excited about somebody else shooting something.

It was just unreal. We gotta tell the story. We gotta tell these story. Yeah. Let's hold let's back up the place. Alright. We, if you guys have not listened to the first phase, what we [00:08:00] call it, part one of the Montana Turkey hunt, I suggest everybody go listen to the Southern ground podcast.

Listen to part one. You're gonna get like right after the kill. Semi lifestyle. Phenomenal discussion. Loved it. Especially going down the road. That was really good. That was unique, but let's start out with what we're gonna call part two, which, what, that was the public land side of this, your, the adventure side.

I gotta ask who planned it, who planned out all the details? Or was it a combination of, I felt like Shad did for like where we went and he the one who told us like, there's turkeys over there. Or was it the bio biologist? It was the biologist told us. Yeah. The biologist told us that there were turkeys down on the public ground where we went.

But yeah, and that's, and if Joey, you know that Joey's probably the one who did that. To answer that question, probably in a lot of ways the public stuff was Joey's I don't know Jacob I know you had a lot to do with the private land stuff, but Joey seems to be [00:09:00] like, Giddy about planning stuff, so I just okay, go freaking, go for it.

Joey's got the the phone etiquette for talking to people. Yeah. So I just let him usually go with that and hell, he enjoys the hell out of it anyway, so I do after that, like he'll gimme the locations and I'll do some map scouting, but yeah, for the most part it's, that was Joey's brainchild there.

The reason I wanted to ask is just like what you were looking for on a map, but it sounds like you were go, were you going more off intel at this point versus, Hey, I'm gonna start digging into maps, harvest data habitat, give us a background there. No, I didn't get in that deep. It was just it was just a few phone calls to the biologist out there, the regional biologist, and bounced around to a couple of those and narrowed down, I.

Regions of the region, be it like the northwest or the southwest part of a region. And they would gimme town names like, Hey, around this town, there's plenty of, [00:10:00] public around there and there's good birds around there. And I would just drop pins on basically most, like a lot of walk-in areas around Montana and the National Forest.

I didn't, I don't think I really dropped any pins really on, on the National Forest because it all looked the same and it wasn't. It, when you get into the National Forest where we were, until you, you like get in there, you can't really tell much on a map, to be honest with you. You could probably turn on Topo and find water and see a few different things.

But as far as details and. What was in that area you needed to go and just get out there and find those pockets of birds. So if you don't wanna answer this, don't, one second. If you don't wanna answer it, y'all don't answer it. But were y'all looking more at national forests or BLM s and that means something to people that's hunted Montana and they would decipher that too.

And you don't have to answer it. You can just be like, Hey, whatever I got I got, that [00:11:00] was what I was gonna say was I felt like most of our map scouting that we did collectively, or cuz we went out to this private land with really not, we had expectation that there was turkeys there, but we didn't know, like there was serious turkeys there.

And so most of my scouting was like backup for that region. So we had quite a few pins. I had quite a few pins, I think you guys did too, for the region that we hunted where we hunted private land. So this third tag was Bonus tag, almost if the, if it just works out perfectly over here, then we'll do this.

And so for me, there wasn't, I didn't have like maybe two or three pins in that region that I don't even think were my pins. I think they were Joey's pins based on some of the stuff. Biologists, and so th this last leg of the trip, we were trying to be fluid on where we were gonna go.

Is there a lot of state land? We were banking a lot on this block management. Land, which we [00:12:00] found out was gonna be non-accessible to us because you actually have to call and reserve your spots or whatever. It was just there's different rules for these Western states that we don't really think about.

And so we don't know about until you go. And so we were just looking for those type of things. And this particular area that we were in had a, we, I mean we killed birds on what I would call, I'm not gonna say what kind of public it is, but like traditional public land which would be things like refuges, WMAs, national forests, things like that.

And then Jacob killed his on state land, which was like just random little sections that they have. And it was just a mixture. I think we were trying to find something with a good balance of both and different habitats. Yeah. Go ahead, Jacob. There's so much public land out there, like until you get to an area that you're like, Hey, we're gonna put some time in here and we're gonna [00:13:00] set up camp, can't really start dissecting it and, making a judgment call there because we got out there and looked into the, national forest b l m and all that stuff.

And until you got into some of that stuff, you didn't really know whether there were Turkey that turkey's there or not. And then we found out pretty quick that where the kind of turkeys were at. And so we narrowed down our search to a certain type of habitat. Yeah. And another thing too, to keep in mind with the bmas, I had a lot of pins dropped on basically every accessible B m A for spring Turkey season in that region.

Just so I had a marker, on the map, for whatever area we were in. The thing to keep in mind though, I think like Parker said, there are two types of bmas. There's a type one bma, which is basically just walk-in. You don't have to contact anybody. It's just a walk-in hunting area. The type two is that same type of area, but you have to have written permission from the landowner that [00:14:00] is under, that has it under that B M A program.

And what Parker also mentioned that you have to have reservations. I knew that you either had to have a reservation like for the day or something like that Hey, we wanna hunt here for this day. What I didn't know is that some people book those things a month in advance or more. Because that first place we rolled into this area, the first BMA that we rolled through had a gobbler on it, and we hightailed it up to the house.

And this lady said, I'm sorry, we're, it's booked up for today. And actually it's booked up through the rest of the season. And I just, she somehow, in a roundabout way said that in an hour long conversation, me and Jacob are in the car like, come on Joey, this turkey's gobbling. We can hear him gobbling out the window like, okay, he's taking this long, that means he's probably a yes.

Like he's getting information. He comes out there. It's a hard no boys. Yeah. Like this turkey's just gobbling across the road. Yeah. The lady was as nice as she could be, but she basically just was telling me [00:15:00] all, everything that I needed to know about a next trip out there, should we decide to go back.

I was like, oh, I need to reserve these bmas in this area. Over a month in advance or whatever. And she also said that they would only they could only reserve him at three days at a time. So for my license number, I could reserve it for three days for Jacob's license number three days, Parker.

So we could tie up a bunch of places during a week if we wanted to. And so that's something to keep in mind. It's, I don't, people could have their own opinions about whether or not that's hotspotting on other Yeah, it's a little bit, yeah, I but it's not really because I would say that you would have to go out there, find the type of place where a Turkey would be at that you're figuring out, like you'd have to figure it out.

I wouldn't recommend just going and finding any of these places and calling the number and reserving it, cuz there might not be turkeys on it. You don't know where the turkeys are gonna be at and out there. That's [00:16:00] a really sensitive thing cuz they're not just. Everywhere all the time they change elevations.

And all that crap. So you just don't know. Yep. And another thing is and then I don't wanna bring up deer hunting too much cuz I don't wanna see Joey get mad. But it's like those BMA places just cuz we've been out to Montana deer hunting before. They come out with a new set of BMA places in August for deer season.

So I don't know when they come out with them for Turkey season. I don't know if it's the same ones or what, but yeah, I don't remember. But they they're only a, there are only certain ones that are open for spring Turkey and spring bearer. They was spring bear season, so there's a few of 'em that are open for spring bearer.

So you just, it's just one of those things you just need to check before you go, just if these places are even open in whatever area you're wanting to go to. Can you guys explain the difference between A B L M and a BM A. So m is the Bureau of Land Management, so that's federally on land. And it's [00:17:00] awesome because you can camp on bbl m you can shoot guns on bbl m I think for the most part in all the country you can basically just roll through bbl.

M and do, you can camp on B L m, huh? Whatever. Yep. You can camp, you can do anything. BMA is block management areas, so that's a state program. That is where the state leases land from landowners, from private landowners for walk-in hunting areas. And like I said, there's type one, there's type two. I don't know what designates type one or type two, if that's up to the landowner, if that's something that the state decides or what.

But that's the difference there. So as far as when you got out there, was the population, the Turkey population, what you thought it was gonna be or not? You gotta understand that we just came from a place where we shot six gobblers. And then left 11 more that were still on that property. And so like our idea of what a good Montana Turkey population is was skewed a little bit [00:18:00] after talking to that one guy and hearing about like what his private land experience was in the area that we were hunting public at, it sounded like more than not, like your high populations are gonna be on private areas close to feed lots, stuff like that.

Yeah. Close to falls, feed lots. And a lot of private land is on river, water and river drainages and stuff like that. So that seemed to be concentrated there versus Oh, if you're hunting them up in such and such place, oh, those public land birds are hard. They're tough. So he told us that we would not he the private land, he said you couldn't kill one.

He was like, you can't kill one out there cuz it's not there. Yeah. And he's also the guy that told us that we wouldn't have to, he's are y'all reprinting your tags? We're like, no. Reprinting your tags. You're actually checking 'em in. This old boy was from Louisiana. He was at the [00:19:00] out there working work at Oilfield.

Oh yeah. And he's our people. Yeah. He is an old southern boy. He's super nice. I will tell you what, though, the guy I'm not gonna say that he gave us great information, but I don't think he gave he talked to us. He was super kind, gave us a lot of great information. It was just hilarious. We can't even, this goes on in the north, it's not tagging, but also like these pe like they don't, Midwesterner, I'm not gonna say all Midwestern, but northern it's not the same culture of Turkey hunting that we have.

And so the respect level maybe that a lot of the people out there have for the Turkey is not quite as high as what we have. And if I had to, if I had to compare it, it's like they view turkeys as just like another pheasant. Just another upland bird. Yeah. They're a nuisance more than anything.

Yeah. Good to know. Yep. All right. As far as as far as the population goes, yeah. I didn't, I don't remember seeing [00:20:00] hardly any turkeys when we were out riding around. And that's what kind of made me think that, yeah, there just weren't that many birds in the area. We saw hens, we saw a few hens, scattered every now and then.

But we didn't see a gobbler anywhere else. If we would've, and at that point, I think if we would've seen one, we would've hopped out and maybe tried to get access to a place. Yeah, we weren't seeing him like driving in the fields that he's not even talking about driving, like around the public roads.

He's talking about like just on private. There wasn't turkeys No. Everywhere. No. So I can only imagine like this overwhelming feeling that you guys had to have felt because, I've been out to Montana, I've mul deer hunted, never started out there, but it was the same deal. Like you're going out there, you've got national forest, you've got BBL m you've got these bmas, there's all kinds of different options, right?

Just throw a freaking dart at the bird and you, but you don't know what you're gonna get. Now with turkeys, at least they do gobble at you so that you've got your hearing to go off of. [00:21:00] But it's gotta be an overwhelming experience dropping in somewhere. God is the limit. But you're on the clock, right?

Like you don't have a month to sit there and figure out Montana. I had those preliminary type questions to set a foundation, but Joey, you wanna kick us off on the story? Just get us rolling. We get there, let's see, we get there. It's a Wednesday, I think after we left. We left private Wednesday morning.

We killed all them in turkeys on Tuesday. And we get there Wednesday afternoon. And by this time, the entire drive out there, it seems like the smoke from the Canadian wildfires had set in, like it looked like a heavy fog. All over the place. We couldn't see more than probably what, a few hundred maybe?

Yeah, several hundred yards off the road. And the radar is showing clear, like clear and sunny. Yeah. It's weird. And when you look up at the sun is blazing, but the sun is like blood orange. It's just creepy because there's, like Parker said, there's no cloud cover, there's nothing blocking the sun.

[00:22:00] It's just smoke laying everywhere. And I just had it in the back of my mind that, that had to just mess up the turkeys. Like they don't know what it is. They could think it was fog. So we get there Wednesday afternoon, we check a couple different spots, didn't hear a single gobble. And the, we were I don't know, we, I'm trying to remember exactly what our thought process was like.

We were about to leave. We saw that one gobbler. Yeah. We saw the one gobbler on the b m a that we couldn't get on. And so I think we tried to loop around like the backside of the B M A, just, throwing a hail Mary just to see if he'd gobbled in the area or whatever behind that place.

We were about to leave though, right then. Yeah. Like we were about to go somewhere else. We talked about like driving to a totally opposite part of the state that night. Yeah. Yeah. Which I wanna talk about that for just a second. Not long, just this, I, this ability to move. This is why I've talked about this, and I think we've all talked about this at some point on southern ground.[00:23:00]

This is why camping and or truck, like tint camping or truck camping on these types of trips is almost what you have to do. I would not recommend unless you're doing like an outfitted hunt or hunting a place that you had know historically has been good. If you're trying to go and learn on states, especially the size of Montana Planned a truck camp or tent camp so that you can move shop if you need to.

And that was what we were all willing to do. But at the same time, we were very lazy compared to ourselves. If we had a lot of drive, like if we had, the pressure was on, and I just didn't, I don't think at any point in this hunt did the pressure ever feel like it was on, cuz we had all just experienced something that we'll likely never experience again.

It's like going out and shoot a 200 inch deer and then being pissed that you don't shoot another one two days later. Like we, we were fine. We would've been okay if we came home, so there's no pressure. But we still, I think, played that [00:24:00] smart. We didn't get a room, we didn't commit to any one spot.

Oh, so go ahead Joey, that I just wanted to say that I think a lot of people get carried away by, Sleeping conditions and they get lost in the weeds whenever it comes to figuring out where they're gonna stay, when really it doesn't have to even be that big of a thing, yeah. And especially out there with the National Forest and the blm, like we were talking about, you can camp literally anywhere.

And there's usually a town, some little town within reasonable drive to go get ice or drinking water, whatever, a handful of stuff. You're, unless you're way up into these big sections of national forests, like way down these service roads, pretty remote, then you're within somewhat reasonable distance of civil civilization to get some stuff.

So your options are pretty much limitless. But we decided we were gonna at least hunt this place that Thursday morning because we were already [00:25:00] there and we could just find a place to camp. And just hunt Thursday morning. If nothing transpired Thursday morning, we were more than willing to go somewhere else.

So Thursday morning we basically, I think we pick a spot. We basically just pick a spot on the map, if I remember correctly. Just some big ridge. And we actually were gonna split up. Parker and I were gonna go one way. Jacob was gonna go another way and just try to find birds that morning. And I think to get the cliff notes of version, Jacob found some sign and Parker and I ended up getting on a bird that was over on private gobbled pretty good.

Couldn't do anything with him. Made a couple moves on him. He eventually quit gobbling. And then we met back up with Jacob and we were coming out of the spot on the service road and we saw Parker and i's gobbler out in the middle of a field on public. Just. But there was, he was literally out in the middle of this field, and it wasn't one of those things where we could have [00:26:00] gotten around him.

We had to just back the car up, park it outta sight, jump out and snake our way through the little bit of terrain that was there and tried to crawl on him because you couldn't call him. He wasn't having any of it. There's two, two, hes or three Hess. How many Hess did he have? Two. There's two twos and two, yeah.

And he was just contemp following him, girls around all day long, because it was the middle of the morning at this point and tried to crawl on him. Never could get close enough. And he eventually hopped over back on the private and got out of there. That was a crawl though. And Probably should have resulted in a dead Turkey, I think.

Yeah. I think we, if had we crawled on, had that whole scenario happened while we when we had Miriam's in our minds, and by that I mean if you are used to hunting Easterns or even Rios and Osceolas, they're [00:27:00] not just gonna they're not just gonna cover that much ground that fast most of the time.

If you see 'em in a spot strut and they're gonna be in that spot somewhere around it, this bird, and it takes a minute to get in the mode of Miriam's, especially public Miriam's in the mountains, because they'll move. That's just what they do. And so when we crawled up and Jacob first saw him, that bird, had we been in Miriam's mode, we would've said, freaking keep going.

Let's crawl. Instead what we did was we got down in the dirt or in the grass and tried to call him up over the hillside, which just wasn't gonna happen. And I think all of us. Realized that we weren't gonna call that freaking Turkey over there. He wasn't gonna he wasn't gonna do nothing. He was just gonna keep walking.

And I think we could have, I think that was a good, it was a good stalk. And also I would say for people who are these the traditional purists of the Turkey hunting world? There's been very few Miriam's hunts that I've ever seen, even seen happen that weren't, that didn't have some amount of crawling [00:28:00] involved just because of the nature of this bird, this Turkey, this particular subspecies of Turkey.

They just, I haven't had a whole lot of up call in one end, like straight to the gun barrel. It's almost always been some type of crawl, except for the private land. The private land. We actually did call those. That was pretty cool. But terrain, we were into the, it was wide open.

Even in the woods, in those in the pines or whatever it was a water. Yeah. There's no underbrush. And I got to be a part of a pretty big moment for Joey when he realized that the Turkey hunting the purest Turkey hunting culture frowns upon crawling. He didn't know Joey.

You didn't know that. I was so surprised. I didn't know there was anything wrong with it, but apparently there is. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with it. You killed. There's nothing wrong with it. You kill birds with a shotgun and maybe a mouth call in your mouth and that's it.

What else would, what else do you want? I called my bird in. You did. He did. It's true. Jacob called all three [00:29:00] turkeys in that he shot all three of 'em. Somebody's a true a true purist. Yeah. Juveniles, but

Oh, leave it to Parker. Leave it to Parker. That like undercut. None of us are no one's safe, Jacob. That's what I'm saying. No one's safe. None. There's always somebody that's gonna hate something that we did hang around long enough. And you'll leave the message groups? Yes. Casey Smith. Casey Smith from the Element.

Commented on one of the posts from that trip, and I think it was like the title of the trip. It was called The Legion. He said, the Legion going be mad when we kill all this Turkey. At one time,

dude, I used to judge a Turkey hunter by if they had holes in their knees or not. Cuz that's just what I mean. That's what I grew up doing, dude. Like hunt all these fields, man. Like I got all kinds of holes in my knees. That's just the way we do it. But yeah I've come to find out that's not the purest way.

They gotta come in just right or [00:30:00] it's probably just, probably shouldn't even shoot 'em. That's what I've heard. That's what I've heard. You probably just let 'em walk on by it. 26 yards just didn't feel right, didn't feel didn't give you that same feeling as it could have. No, man, it, it was so that's just really how you gotta hunt 'em out west, man.

That's, you don't got to, but if you want to have some good hunts and successful hunts and fill some tags, it's a very effective way to do it out west. Now I know you guys didn't take decoys, did you? Take Jacob, take one. Decoy. But we never used take decoys. Yeah, I was gonna want crazy lady. I was gonna ask like in that wide open terrain, and o obviously you gotta do something right?

I you gotta crawl, you gotta do something. I was gonna ask if you guys did use decoys or have used decoys in the past with Miriam's because I would think it's probably a better gives you ups your odds. Jacob, describe your decoy to everyone. So crazy legs is one of those. It might be aprimo, strutting, decoy.

Where it's just the [00:31:00] front of the Turkey. Oh, a repeat. Is it a reaping deco? Is that what it is? You add on like the you add on the tail fan. I've never reaped, I've never reaped a Turkey. But like I just added like some feet to it, like actual fiction feet. That's horrific. That's why cause he is got these little feet dangling to make him look like he's walking towards you.

If you got him set up on a Turkey, but he never left camp. Like we, we didn't use him on any of these turkeys out there as far as that we were pure. If a game war, if, if, okay let me back up. If I had have drove up on y'alls camp, y'all weren't there and I saw that monstrosity of a decoy, I honestly would have squealed tires getting out of there thinking you guys were, something was wrong with you.

But I didn't, that's the most interesting decoy I've ever seen. He kept talking about [00:32:00] crazy legs and yeah, I was picturing something else and. Then he pulls this joker with zip tied thatum Turkey feet on it. He got the spurs off, which that's so that's good. But it's got these little Turkey feet dangling off of it.

And I wanted to use crazy legs, if I'm being honest on, I thought, what more fitting Turkey? Oh, dude. Than this one that we were talking about that was getting it on private land the whole time. Yeah. But dude, that was Jacob, go ahead. I'm sorry, Parker, go ahead. I was just gonna say that Turkey he deserved it, I think.

I think he deserved to be decoyed in, but we never pulled it out. We didn't never do it. We got standards, Adam standards, if we had really gotten it in our wanted to really get some quality footage that after we had killed those six turkeys that morning, we would've busted out crazy legs just to mess with other turkeys and get footage.

That would've been fun. We should have thought about that. That would've actually been pretty fun. Yeah, don't put crazy [00:33:00] legs on your head. You've seen those guys like fanning with the Turkey on their head. You would poke your eyes out with that joker. So don't do that. That's a safety c precaution.

Those the Miriam's in that area, I swear they were like half hawk because they had talons, like sharp talons. Yeah, that's true. They were, they did, they were pretty and big, huge, giant feat, man. Just a Miriam's is just a big Turkey anyway, so you get a big chunk of breast off of 'em. I don't know.

You guys, Joey you're probably, I don't know Jacob how much you cook, but I know Joey, you try a lot of stuff with Wild Turkey recipes. In my opinion, Miriam's is the best tasting Turkey. I don't know if it's what they eat. It seems like they have maybe like more fat on it or something. I noticed that they were more white.

Yes. Super white Easterns, our Easterns and the Rios that I killed was pink, or almost red looking. Even the breasts their breast meat [00:34:00] was white. White. It was like chicken white. For the most part, when we opened up the crops on, most of them, they were all full of grass.

So they're, grass fed, turkeys, they're not eating a bunch of acorns and stuff with tannins in them to make 'em bitter, is what I would think. But yeah, that sounded real smart. Just the use of the word tannin was, that was good. That was great. You nailed it. And we've been messing around long enough.

Jacob, talk to us about the first kill, cuz you were first on the board in part two, right? Yeah. I wasn't supposed to be I took Parker's gun away from him once and he reminded me of that. He was like, I've never had a gun snatched away from me so quick. It was on this stupid freaking bird that we were crawling on like Joey.

So at this point, Joey was first shooter, I guess I was second shooter. We didn't really care honestly, I don't think, but I was just carrying this gun and we see a Turkey and Jacob's gimme gun, grabbed it. It's gimme the freaking [00:35:00] gun. It's my gun. I was out front and I saw this bird, and so I just laid down on the ground.

I was the closest, so I thought I needed to have the gun. I gave it to him outta fear, to be honest with you. Yeah. He also had the camera too, so that gum camera, we know what happened last time I tried to swipe, but, so eventually we went out to we found a little bit. Little piece of state property that had some terrain that we thought was interesting.

So we went out there it was a fairly good walk and we went pretty, pretty sneakily out there towards it, even though we probably didn't have to worked our way down this river bottom. And we got to one of the, probably the prettiest looking places to kill a Turkey at. And we were just standing there in the middle of the road after we had crossed the river and found some actual Turkey tracks.

We're like, oh, there's a hen in this old feed lot, and she's just two [00:36:00] around. Doesn't care that we're there. We're about 80 yards away. And so it was getting later in the day, it was probably about five o'clock by that point. And we're talking about what we needed to do. They decided to call their wives.

I was like, Hey, It's gonna take us at least 30 minutes to walk out of this place. By that time we get in the car and to drive anywhere else, it's gonna be dark, so we decided just to hang out and I had spotted some turkeys about 800 yards away across a field on some private land that we didn't have permission to hunt.

And we decided to hang out there and just see what came into this little lot back there. And so it was a pretty eventful evening. Not just turkeys, but we saw deer we had a porcupine charges and then a skunk after we spoke. A skunk. Yeah. And a feral house cat. Yep. I forgot about the house.[00:37:00]

Yeah, just short of the mountain line. About the time we saw the porcupine coming out across the field, the turkeys that I had spotted earlier, they had moved to that right behind it. And then it was probably 650, 700 yards. And just threw a hail Mary loudest call you could get out at 'em. And Joey was watching 'em and Parker was watching 'em, and he was like, oh, they perk their head up.

They, and they started slowly making their way across the field. Like not in a single file line or a group of Jakes, but like a horizontal line just spread out across the field, just feeding and working their way to us, like an hour. And like for, it took a long time. It, we had plenty of time to watch and see what they were doing and eventually, like we had made this plan oh, if they come through here, this is gonna be perfect.

You didn't talk, you didn't talk about our tree Jacob. Oh yeah. Oh man. The most comfortable tree Joey Bell has ever sat [00:38:00] in, because we only hear about how his legs go numb. Half the time it was legit, the most comfortable Turkey setup I'd ever been a part of. Like it beat every Turkey chair that I've ever owned.

I don't know, just the way this tree had fell and the limbs or whatever. I could sit in the fo, I don't know, it was like a fork of a tree, of a limb and I could prop my feet up and, oh man, lemme tell you, I miss it. I still miss it. He was in a Cottonwood lounge chair is what he was in. Yeah, it, but the funny thing is we were making so many jokes the whole time.

Like even if Turkey does gobble over there, I don't know if I'm gonna leave this spot. It's almost like too good to be true of a spot to just set up on a Turkey. It looked like somebody had set it there. Probably God, when he created creation for somebody to sit down. And shoot something from that spot.

And it is like the most beautiful meadow and this river bottom and all [00:39:00] the animals that live there come into this one central location. It was just, it was a freaking cool spot, man. Like it was, yeah. It was beautiful. The 360 photo that you screenshotted is a picture of that, of all of us, three of us sitting together, yep.

Is the Cottonwood Lounge. So anyway these turkeys come in and we know that they're Jakes and we already know that I have a propensity to shoot Jake's. I don't discriminate if a turkey's willing to come into my calls, he's good enough to die. So we had plan on they come in through this area, it's gonna be great.

Everything will line up. It looks like they were gonna keep coming around the group of trees that were there. And come closer. So I was set up on that. Then they actually went to the first place that we thought we were gonna, be able to shoot 'em at. So when they came through the, that little gap in the trees and came into the piece that we were hunting right there[00:40:00] they stayed so close together.

I couldn't get a shot right away. And so I then had to put the gun barrel on Joey's side of the tree to get a beat on one. And still, they were still close together. And it wasn't until they were about to get ready to booger out of there, that one of 'em separated. And luckily Joey had the fortitude and the foresight to plug his ears.

Cause, and I was shooting through this little triangle of branches coming off this cottonwood. And as soon as like he got clear I let that one of those Jakes have it and, cut 'em down at about 35 yards or so. And then we were, I was done for that region at that point, but it was it was the coolest Jake hunt ever.

And so the smoke that we talked about That came through from the Canadian wildfire. It had lifted a little bit on this day. Yeah. It was a little bit better, but it was definitely still hazy. And it [00:41:00] created this absolutely stunning sunset We were talking about you could look directly into the sun.

It was like this orange and pink with this nice haze. And we had this river bottom. There was a, an old Plymouth and three other cars, like just back next to this river just parked there. Like they were ready for a monster truck to come, go over 'em just right next to each other. And we took these pictures of this bird on that hood of that Plymouth.

And it's just the colors that the sky makes is, it's unbelievable. Just golly man I want, I wish I could take a picture of every Turkey I shoot in Montana, because they were even better once you got out to the, we got out to the highway and had 'em on the fence post. Yeah. Yeah. And the song it's just this Oh man.

Yeah, you gotta go look at it. We've posted several on one on Instagram, on the southern ground. Instagram just, and as the photographer, a lot of times like where we're left is what we're left with on [00:42:00] deer and Turkey pictures is whatever the setting is. And usually it's just hardwoods, which is beautiful pretty setting.

It's hard to make 'em look super unique. These one, these pictures, like I didn't undo much editing, honestly. Even the shot, like all the, every shot turned out beautiful. Not because of the photography skill, but just because of the setting. You could have done it with a cell phone, it would look awesome.

Just, when you hear us talk about Montana and the experience of shooting turkeys in that setting, it's real. It's like a legit thing. That was, that one was so much fun. And then I knew that Jake wasn't gonna snatch the gun from me again. And I enjoyed that part as well. You're up to bat next.

And what day are we on here? So is this first day on public land? That was the Thursday. Yeah, that was the first full day. Okay. Yep. All right. So I guess day two parked are up to bat. It's Friday. Yep. Day two. Again[00:43:00] I wasn't first shooter. Joey was Joey. Joey started this trip as first shooter. And with Jacob's Jake's Joey was the reason we didn't triple on Jake's.

I didn't necessarily want to shoot a Jake, but to triple after a sex couple would've been cool. And yeah. And a Miriam's Jake, the only difference in a Miriam's Jake and a Miriam's Gobbler or Tom is I. Like the beard size and the tail fan. But even the tail fan, a lot of times they're so close to being full.

But the beard is little, but the heads, dude, they're just gigantic heads. A ton of meat on the breasts. Like they're big feet. They're just big dead on birds. But Joey's I don't wanna shoot a Jake. And I was like I don't either. Let's just film this thing and do it. And it was, and it turned out being a great film.

And so now Jacob does not have a tag, so he's pretty much running camera just doing that kind of stuff. And me and Joey are shooters, but Joey [00:44:00] is first shooter. And, but this is my favorite thing about hunting with guys like this. When we go out it, we have like maybe an order in which we're gonna try to do things, but sometimes with Turkey hunting that order gets mixed up and it doesn't work.

And it's a lot of, we turkeys the element guys use that. The other day as well. A, we they're all, we turkeys. They're not like, I could have taken any one of those beards, any one of those sets of Spurs home and I wouldn't have felt like I got cheated at all cuz they're all of ours, and so that one was a beautiful hunt. It was so pretty. Just a really good way to kick off this public trip. So we go out the next morning I'm trying to remember what we even did that next full morning we went on, we got on that Turkey that y'all had That's right before. That's right.

We got on him and had a, I thought a pretty decent setup for what he did the morning before that we got fairly close to him on the roost. He was gobbling right on. He was [00:45:00] roosted on public. And his hens flew down onto public. And if he would've flown that direction, we might have had a chance.

But he didn't, he flew out in the middle of the private field and just strutted and acted like a jerk the whole way out, gobbling his face off, strutting, literally in the middle of this field, close to the house, close to the farmhouse. And so we moved around and we were gonna try to see if maybe he was gonna do the same thing that he did the day before, which was ending up on public from that property.

So we went over there, didn't find him heard another Turkey goblin so we camped we were on a campground and we hear this other Turkey goblin. And it sounds like from the property line that we're on, if you just followed it straight for maybe a mile ish, a mile and a half, you'd end up at our campsite.

It wasn't that far. And we hear Turkey, it sounds like it comes from that direction. But the way this other bird was, with the hills and the drainages and stuff like that you can get fooled sometimes, [00:46:00] and a Miriam's gobble isn't super strong, so it's already weak in the first place and you're trying to get the direction.

So we end up going the direction towards camp, like walking right towards camp, because we think it's another Turkey. And then the one that we were on that morning, he starts gobbling again. We're like, oh, it's probably just him. We probably just got fooled. We're like, okay. At this point it's I don't remember like eight 30, maybe something like that.

Eight 30. Maybe nine o'clock. I don't know. Maybe earlier. No, it was earlier than that because was it breakfast at two hours at that time For, and it was probably more it was probably more like six 30. Really? And we, it was probably seven. It could daylight seven 30. It was daylight.

Yeah. I think it was about seven 30 when we got to the diner. Okay. Yeah. So we end up, we decided to go to this diner and again we're all pretty much still on cloud nine. Jacob killed another Turkey for this trip has been awesome. So we were like, let's go. Just eat some nice breakfast. And we ate a really good breakfast at this little diner, which kind of was the another [00:47:00] theme to the trip.

We took a coffee and cookie break for the first one and then went out and killed these turkeys, like early breaks, breaks that we guys like us typically aren't taking. I'm usually not gonna take a break until 10 o'clock, at least. And we were taking these breaks so early in the day oh nothing's gobbling.

Let's go home. And so we take this little break, it takes two hours to eat, take a, took a long time and we're driving back to camp to go take a nap. I think that's what we were going to do. I don't remember. We were gonna do something, take a nap, do something lazy, and we start driving. We are almost to camp and we see a stru out.

To the right on the road to our camp on public with a hen. And me and Jacob both saw it, like there's a Turkey. Oh my gosh, there's a strouder with it. And we just keep going straight. We don't, Joey's an excellent public land, like Turkey hunting driver because he doesn't even check up. It's just keep going.

And he keeps going. And we get behind [00:48:00] this hill and it was about the most perfect spot to do a, like a crawling Turkey hunt type thing, a stalk. And so we get behind this little hillside and park and get out. And again, Joey's shooter, Joey's first shooter. And Jacob has the camera and I said, Hey, Joey, which you choose the direction that you want to go.

It was like a The matrix pill scene which way you want, Joey, the other way might be it. You never know. So Joey chooses the way that honestly, that I would've chosen to, it felt like the easy, the best way to get around on this Turkey. And Joey goes that way and me and Jacob go the other direction and we're just slowly sneaking, like really slowly.

Cuz honestly we don't know if the Turkey is still there. He's a Miriam's, there's a chance he's not. He might be 400 yards down the hall, we don't know. And just creeping. And I come up on the backside of this hill and I see him strutting there at 35 ish yards maybe. And I look at Jacob and [00:49:00] I, man, it was another moment.

If you listen to the story about, about the Turkey, I shot in one of the turkeys I shot in Florida. It was, I basically shot it out from underneath Brett cuz he didn't have his gun up. And the Turkey, it was. Any of us would've probably done the same thing, but I felt bad, I didn't wanna do that again when it's really supposed to be Joey's turn to shoot.

And so I look at Jacob, it's I can see him, I can kill him. Should I shoot him? And Jacob looks at me like, I'm dumb. And he's yeah, shoot him. And so I lift, I raised up and shot him, and he f flopped pretty quick. And Joey came out, it seemed like right behind the Turkey. And I was like, were you about to kill him?

He said, yeah, I saw his fan. And I think, Joey, you were just, you were like, just about to rise up and you were probably closer to the Turkey. You were really close to him. Yeah, I had to tell my side of the story, I had slipped around on the, the side that I had chosen. And I was moving just super slow, like looking to where I was gonna put my foot down because this Turkey [00:50:00] was in gun range, probably.

As soon as we got up to the backside of this little knob, like it wasn't even a hill. It was like a knob. Yeah. And if they, if the knob hadn't been there, that Turkey was probably 50 yards away if that never been pine cones. So you had to watch your step. Yeah. It was, the pine cones was like a little minefield, and you didn't wanna step on one of those.

So I was just being extra cautious and just watching where I was stepping and just taking my sweet little time to get up around to the edge. And I get up to the edge and there's a there's a little pine tree there with a little bit of brush right beside it. And excuse me. I get right up behind it and I ease up and I see the tip top of this Gobbler's fan.

And I knew right then, okay, he's in range. All I gotta do is stand up and shoot this thing. So I squat back down. I had a, I remember now, I had already had my safety off. I didn't go down to click my safety off. I went down to Get my feet adjusted up under me so I could raise up, without slipping or anything like that.[00:51:00]

And as my head comes up over this bush, the Turkey gets shot.

Eddie goes to Flo. But I legit was not disappointed at all. It was one of those situations where like somebody, no matter who, somebody needed to kill this Turkey, whether it was me or Parker, but it was still awesome. We both did, all three of us did an excellent job of not bumping that Turkey. Yeah.

Cause how close we were very close. And it was again so surreal, dude. Like every Turkey of that trip. Did that just happen? Did we really just spend two hours at breakfast eating a wonderful breakfast, like home cooked freaking fried potatoes? Bacon, a half cooked pancake. That wasn't great.

I was about to say the best soft pancake you've ever had. I thought maybe medium rare pancake. I thought maybe Montana folks made pancakes differently. I didn't know it was like a cream filled pancake [00:52:00] cuz it wasn't cooked all the way through. They were having a rough morning. They were, they had one person in the kitchen and they were doing the best they could, but you know what, you can just look out the window and see all the mountains and the beautiful scenery and you're happy to be there.

Honestly. You're like, okay, that's, it's fine. I'm like, so I was running the camera on that hunt and I was so pumped that I got it on camera. I didn't care if I was shooting or not. Like it was a win for me just cuz I got it on camera. Yeah. It was Jacob's first, probably first time as a camera man.

Maybe. I don't know. Is that your first time running a camera for Hunt for anybody else? Yeah. Besides the tactic cam on the end of my gun. Yeah. And it's a good, it's a good shot too. He, gets it. I did I did videotape me and Joey's hunt in Mexico last That's right. Year. So it wasn't my first time, but like the first like following somebody behind and stock on a Turkey.

Yeah. That was the first time like that. And and so the [00:53:00] f here we were l like as the crow flies, quarter mile maybe away from our campsite. And it felt like we didn't, I, I don't know. I felt like we should work a little bit because the car was only like maybe 84 yards, I think is what it was.

86, something like that. 89. I arranged it from where we shot that Turkey. It was 89 yards, 89 yards from the truck. And I was like, I'll see you boys at camp. I'm just gonna walk back with this Turkey to earn it a little bit. And and I did. It was a lot of fun. It was a fun walkout. So here we are.

It's miracle time, right? Like we've got two turkeys. Joey's prophecy is being fulfilled, one after the other. And honestly, I'm not. We worked pretty hard on some of these morning hunts and afternoon hunts. Like we, we hiked pretty good in there, but the actual hunt to this point were that was nice, that was a pleasant day.

Pleasant strolled through the woods. And we walked a good we walked a good solid mile back to where we killed Jacob's [00:54:00] Turkey. And then I remember, cuz I, I tracked it on my garment or whatever. We walked eight miles or so on Friday. And then see yeah, on Friday and then I think we covered pretty good amount of ground on Saturday morning too.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause after I killed mine, after I killed mine on Friday, we went right back into the woods. Like it was, yeah, it was no time. And we were trying to get Joey's bird and so we put on, we tacked on a pretty dang good couple hikes right there. Yeah. We walked about six or seven miles, I think.

Then. Yeah. So we walked a fair amount. Was there a certain type of habitat you guys were keying in on? So I know you weren't just like blindly taking off walking, but what made you want to choose the area that you were in? I think out there, the outlying factor is, we've all heard is water. And so we are really focused on creek drainages and river bottoms where we could ac where we could get to river bottoms.

It was pretty spotty access to river bottoms. You had state land, the bmas, the B L m that was like scattered [00:55:00] all over the place. And so when we would find a place that had a good amount of river bottom in it, we would, we'd focus in on that and foothills and the mountains and stuff. Because once we, it, I guess we just kept wanting to kill a Turkey up and then ponder roses.

Yeah. Because we kept going back up in there, but the turkeys just weren't up in there. We didn't find hardly any sign. Never heard any gobbles, like up in the mountains where we were at, or the hills. I guess it wasn't really that high. But it was just that lower elevations that we were finding turkeys a little bit more diverse habitat.

Yeah. And speaking of diverse habitat, I think one of the things that we started eventually looking for was these were these spots where the Cottonwood River bottoms met the mountains. It goes back to. Diversity but transitions. And it is a hard line transition out there where it goes from flat and river [00:56:00] bottom with nothing really, but cotton woods but up into, in like these prime roosting locations, right on the edge of that in the hills.

That bird that we saw on private land, that's what he was doing. He was on public, just riding on public roosting on a little point and flying down into the farmland and living his day out there. The cool thing though that I've noticed about Wyoming, Nebraska, and Montana is if you'll key in on.

These systems, these like winding river systems or creek systems where the habitat's pretty low, that you don't have much. They're gonna be there though. They're gonna be in there. And all you have to do is just follow those creeks, follow that line of trees and figure out where they're at. And the sign will show you because sign shows up really well in those bottoms.

You can see poop, you can see tracks on the roads scratching, maybe sometimes, not really cuz it's really grassy. But [00:57:00] between the tracks and the poop, you can figure it out and you can figure out why or where they're at. You just have to, it's kinda like a maze, you're just weaving through there trying to figure it out.

And we didn't do as much of that this time because we didn't have to. But should we have had to do that? I think that would've been the way to do it. It's just, we, I guess we did with your Turkey Jacob. We did exactly that. We just winded through there until we found it, until we found the sign and we sat down.

Finding those, that diversity, but what I've heard is it just depends on the time of the year that you're there and what the weather is like when you're there. Because they go into them. They do use the mountains. Like you can tell there is historical sign in there. You can see the old tracks.

They go up there, but you just gotta figure out where they're at the time that you're there, because I think that it changes so much. Prophet, reverend, whatever, we're gonna call you for the rest of the night. The prophet, I like that. The prophet tonight. Talk to us about that last one, man.

Yeah, it was Friday [00:58:00] afternoon after we killed Parker's Bird. And like we had said, we put in some miles that afternoon hiking around just trying to find some other birds. And it was getting late in the evening and we were trying to make a game plan for the morning. And it was, at this point I was just like, you know what?

We've had one more heck of a trip and if if it doesn't happen in the morning let's just go if it doesn't happen, like first thing in the morning we had a couple spots we were gonna check. The first spot we went to was actually the intel from that Cajun, that oilfield Cajun that we met in town.

And I don't know that, I don't know that he gave us bad information or just whatever, but we went to that spot. It was real windy wind had picked up. Finally, we didn't, we hadn't brought up the fact that it was calm for just about all week that we were there, which is very unusual. For that part of the country, cuz it's usually like 20 something mile an hour wind all day, every day.

Steady. And it hard, it hadn't hardly blown all week [00:59:00] until I think at Friday afternoon it blew maybe a little bit. And then Saturday morning it picked up. So didn't hear anything at the spot. Saturday morning I think we walked, we saw one hand Miles. Y'all saw one hand out there. Yeah. We had a deer.

Jumped her bu or busted her or whatever, saw her running off. And didn't hear her see anything else. Went to did we go to just one more spot? Yeah. We went to that overlook where we, where our initial plan was. That looking over that Cottonwood river bottom. Yeah. And it's, I had a coulda, woulda, shoulda moment.

We probably should've come here. We probably would've at least heard a gobble or something like that. Yeah. But by the time we got there in the morning they had moved off or whatever. If there was a Turkey even there. But I felt pretty confident about that spot. At least seeing or hearing turkeys there.

Yeah. The vantage point that we had, we could have seen turkeys for nearly a mile, almost literally a mile. If they had been running [01:00:00] through there, we pro we could have seen them. So we were sitting there on this overlook, just glassing over this bottom. And we were sitting there for a little bit of little while and it was my call, at that point I was only with the tag left.

I said, boys, we've had a good time. Let's go eat breakfast and get outta here. I'm fine with eating this tag heavy on the eating breakfast cuz that food was some kind of good. Yeah, we were headed right back to that diner. Parker wanted to find out about the french toast, seeing how the pancakes Good.

Can I get a french toast? Well done please. Yeah, good thing about French toast is if you don't cook it enough, it's just bread. But eat breakfast and we had changed, like we had changed out of our boots or my shoes. We had Chocos and Crocs on like we were in comfortable travel clothes, ready to just hit the road, eat breakfast, head back to camp.

And we were just had in our mind of just pack up camp and leave and we go back up the same road [01:01:00] that Parker killed his bird off of and look off to the left way off the road. It was a, mine was way off the road. He said way off the road. It was way out there, but like mine was at least a couple hundred yards off the road instead of 89.

Okay. So 93 yards off the road.

So we bought down through here and I see a hen. Out way off to the left. And I forget what I said. I said somebody gets some binoculars. He, or whatever he said, somebody gimme some binoculars. And we see we keep cr keep creeping up. We don't stop the truck. Keep creeping up.

See the hen I think we see another he, and then we creep up a little bit more and we see a gobbler and we see a male Turkey. I think he was big enough that we pretty much assumed he was a gobbler. Big old. He was in trouble no matter what. He had a read it. Yeah. You know what's funny though, talking about what Joey did that first [01:02:00] time, another just golf clap moment for Joey.

We watched those hens and we were like pausing and stopping looking. When he saw that gobbler, he sped up. He was like, it's a goler. We kept going. I couldn't even film it. I was like trying to film it. I'm like, Joey's knocking us around. Speeding through this dirt road. We we pull up, get outta sight again, and I jump out.

I don't change my shoes. I don't, I grab a face mask outta my vest. I put a mouth on my mouth and I get the gun and we just go because, these turkeys move. They were walking, when we saw him. So we didn't have time to just doddle around and get a plan together. The plan was to get out of the truck and get as close as we could to this Turkey before he sees us.

And we snake up through some some pine trees outta sight. The wind was blowing, so that kept a lot of noise down. So we were able to cover a pretty good amount of ground. Started having Charlie horses. Yeah, I don't know what it was. Both of y'all [01:03:00] at the same time were like, ah, Jacob. Jacob was having them too, but I don't know what it was, but I swear it was going from being completely relaxed to being on pins and needles.

I was like, I didn't know what was going that's, I haven't watched that. I forgot that. And I had the camera running and I'm like running, like we're all like creeping down, moving, and all of a sudden both guys, like both of 'em got shot in a battle. It's man down. Oh God, such an old man running around.

Not as good as they used to be. I had my leg straightened out. I was walking dang near peg leg up there for a good 50 yards or so, just trying to keep my leg from just drawing up. It's so funny. And yeah it, I guess it subsides enough or I just quit thinking about it and we get up to this. There was a big rock right up on top of this little knob there, and we're like, okay, get up to this.

Where we saw him he should be right on the other side of this rock. And if I get up there, I might be able to shoot him just from this rock. And so I [01:04:00] creep up air and I start easing up over this rock. I don't see anything. Meanwhile, Jacob has gone around the right side of this thing and I forget what happened.

He somehow got our attention because he saw the turkeys. And I re, I remember Parker was between Jacob and I, and Parker I think was trying to film or whatever, and Parker don't remember this, but I just like gently and probably a little rude rudely move Parker outta my way. I don't remember it at all.

I just remember just taking my hand and just moving Parker a little bit and just start crawling because there was just no time to waste at this point. And I get up there, I see the Turkey, I get down on all fours and I keep I keep a pine tree in between he and I get up to that pine tree and I just, there's another little pine tree up, another 10, 15 yards or so.

I kind of crab step [01:05:00] over to my left as low as I can. The turkey's speeding. He's feeding, he's strutting. He pokes his head up every now and then, and I freeze. And then he goes back, what all could you see, Joey? Could you just see the top of him or something? I could see the top of his back when he had his head down.

And then when he was strutting I could see, the top half of his body. And so whenever I could see his head, I just froze. And when I didn't see his head, I just moved and covered ground because the, like I said, the wind was blowing. He maybe could hear me, but maybe the wind was blowing enough that he didn't really think about it.

So as long as I didn't see his head, I was moving. And too it was the last it was, this was the la this was it was either him or going home empty handed. And what else have you got to lose? From where me and Parker were at, cuz we had a little bit of elevation on you and the Turkey and every time, like he was turned towards us for a good little bit and it was like, oh, he doesn't [01:06:00] need to move out that way.

And you were literally like moving towards the Turkey while he was turned towards you. You can't tell the, you can't see the terrain that was between y'all from where I'm filming at. So this footage it looks like the Turkey is staring into your soul and you're just walking crawling up to him.

Yeah. But in reality he couldn't see you. Yeah. There was just enough, ripples in the land to to hide his vision, at certain points. And as long as I didn't see them eyeballs, I moved and I got up to the second tree and got my bearings again. And there was another little bitty, these three pine trees got gradually smaller as I went along, the first tree was like, I don't know, 10 feet high.

The second one was like five feet high and then there was one that was maybe like two to three feet high. And but it was just funny. So I get to the second tree and again, I just start crab stepping over to the left cuz he's, the Turkey is moving from left to and so I'm trying to just [01:07:00] pivot and I keep something in between he and I, but I didn't make it to the, to that last tree.

He stopped and I think I, and I knew I was close enough then that if he stuck his head up, I could get a shot. And I get situated a little bit. I get my knees up under me and he sticks his head up and I just, I fire and I let him have it. And it was, yeah, it was, that was got wild at that point cuz we were all just super excited is we just crawled up on those Turkey and Chacos and Crocs and, I didn't have but a mouth call and a face mask that I got outta the truck.

And we slipped up and killed this Turkey on the way to camp to pack up and leave. We were ready to leave the state and we killed this thing on the way back to camp. Tell us Joey, which Turkey this was, or that we think it was. We thought, and to this day we may be right that it was [01:08:00] that first Turkey that Parker and I got on and the Turkey that we set up on the morning before because of just the proximity.

Of where we had seen this Turkey, he had two hens with him. It was just marching along. Didn't have a care in the world. That day he was, that day that he fooled us the day or the day before that, not that he fooled us necessarily, but that we thought we heard the Turkey by camp, which ended up being a Turkey that we, that I shot.

The bird, this bird had found his way into this little creek bottom. That ended up over close to where we were at. It actually ended up, you could take a finger off of that and it would've been right there. And the direction that the birds were heading before you shot him was right down into that little finger.

And we knew he had worked that direction the day before. So there's a really good chance that we could have boogered him. Off of that public spot he was initially at. He could have seen us walking in or [01:09:00] something and he just adjusted a little bit. Cuz we did give him some pretty significant time throughout this trip.

But the way that it looks on a map, like there's a really good possibility that it was the same gobbler that had the same two hymns with him. Yeah. Which is a cool way to end that. And I, even if it's not that Turkey, God's gonna have to tell me when I go to heaven one day, cuz I won't believe that till I die.

I think. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was something, and up until we saw that Turkey, I was legit ready, just ready to go home, just not in a bad way. Missing kids. Not in a bad way. Not in a bad way, like in a fulfilled way. It was like, it's man, we've done all we can do. Yeah. Let's just get outta here and get on back to Bozeman and fly out and go home.

But then we saw the Turkey and everything changed. It was it was game time. Yeah, there was, we were either coming back empty handed or we were killing that Turkey and that Turkey didn't stand a chance. Once [01:10:00] second. Yeah. It was in spooky or killing. That's about all you could do. Yeah. I'd like to round this thing out with a few more questions here.

I haven't heard you guys mention any type of pressure whatsoever. Did you guys run into any, or, we saw one truck from Mississippi up on some public, but other than that, I don't think we saw another no. I don't know locals about pressure. They said there was some before us. They actually, some people were like, there's so many people through here.

There's been people in, in and outta here all day. Yeah. But they just weren't there when we were there. Yeah. But it's hard to, it's hard to gauge what they think. There's a lot of pressure versus what we think is a lot of pressure. I don't really know. Nobody coming through asking to hunt turkeys and then five people a season coming through asking to hunt turkeys.

Yeah. That's not w amazing in the southeast. Pressure. Yeah. But the roads had obviously been used, and you never know. It's [01:11:00] Montana. A lot of people are going to fly to Montana to go hike and camp and be around the woods and nature on these public areas. That could be anything, man.

You just really never know when you're in a destination vacation state. Yeah. I went elk hunting in Colorado on Labor Day, and we thought the entire national Forest was full of hunters, but it was all hikers. Like the next day, like everybody peeled out, right?

Like we had a lot of room to r to move right after that. So I get what you're saying there. Recreational hikers, all that good stuff. It's big country man. And a Turkey is not super high on their priority list for locals. If you go to a WMA in any of the states we live in, or Georgia or Florida or Mississippi or Kentucky, a lot of these southern states, local people hunt those places.

You're not, it's not all outta state. In my experience, out west, it's pretty much all outta state people that you, if you run into [01:12:00] anybody, it's gonna be a non-resident and it's just tickling around the, like the National Forest and b LM and all that stuff like, Did we even pass anybody on those roads back there?

Like even just people like passing through? I don't, I It was just us back there for the most part. Yeah. But, just to say there the, these stories sound like it was just easy Turkey hunting, and it was the times that we killed turkeys were relatively there wasn't a lot of sweat equity in those hunts.

But without those man, those were a lot of like right place, right time situations. I wouldn't bank on going anywhere to any state based on somebody's story about driving up and seeing one strutting. It's definitely possible, obviously we proved that, Western, yeah.

20 minutes later on your's in Joey's. Last turkeys we wouldn't have killed those birds. No. Yep. Good timing. It was a [01:13:00] lot of good timing type situations and stuff. I will encourage people to hunt turkeys out west because it is fun and it's a beautiful place. And find a western state, like in search state here, Wyoming, Montana, all have great Turkey hunting.

And you should go as early as possible usually around, April 20th or so. That's the best time, earlier the better.

Can tell I already like you freaking Tennessee guys, man, y'all out there just misleading people all over the place. Where did, okay, so that does kind of transition into a good topic here, the breeding season. Where were you guys at within that breeding season? I don't even, what the heck is a breeding season?

Okay. Like I hunted tur turkeys in Tennessee. Yeah. May 28th yesterday I was hunting turkeys in Tennessee that had a pile of hens [01:14:00] with them. So what the frick is a breeding season because it seems like every time I hunt late season turkeys, they're covered up in hens. You keep coming to Tennessee. We our gobblers, we're a hunt.

We just have hens. We have pilo, turkeys, pilo, Turkey equals hens. The gobbler. Yeah. Pilo hens with 'em. You no ratios off. I went with Taylor Johnson on Saturday and dude, we had a gobbler goblin on private and we had a hen on public with us, flew over us into the field with us and then ran to that gobbler on private and took him away.

Yeah, go figure. Anyways, this ain't about me. Last. Let's get a couple more questions. Breeding season you said Breeding season. Breeding season. Yeah. So let's, you can't tell. It's just, yeah. Gobbler with hands. Pick one because Yeah. Gobbling activity. Good. Parker and I killed our birds in the very middle of the day, and they had, hes with them and they were willing to follow them to the ends of the earth.

Do you know anything about like the nesting period out there? I don't, you [01:15:00] would assume that it was later, it would be later than hours. That's what I would think. But it's hard to tell. There's no, we honestly didn't see enough turkeys on the public to really gauge that either. With the two go, the two gobbler that we saw, we killed them.

Except except for the one on that first day. If you think about it, am I right or am I wrong? You killed, possibly killed that one. You killed that one on the last day. I'm talking about the one that we saw on that B m A land. Oh yeah. Hunt we hypothesize that's the one that Parker killed because that BMA was also not that far from where we can't Yeah, it could have been.

It could have been. We killed all I what? We killed all the gobbler in Montana. Let's just go ahead and say it. What we're all did what we, the reason why we say that the reason why we say that cause there wasn't just a lot of turkeys out. So like you piece together the turkeys that you do see and see the potential.

It could have been the same one, and I do know for certain, I've seen a lot of my buddies hunting Montana this year. A lot of [01:16:00] people on social media hunting in Montana. So there has been pressure there and, for all we know two weeks ago, it could again got just blasted with people and every gobbler, or a lot of the gobbler got killed.

You just don't know. We don't have any idea. It seemed like the Turkey population was low, and so it was easy to piece together why they might be over there, in the same areas or whatever. But I don't have a guess on breeding season. They seemed hen up gobbler. I think every single gobbler we saw had a hen.

Am I right? Yep. At least one. That's right. What's the, we know there's one area left with at least, that'll have at least six two year olds next year. Yeah. And a few three year olds at least. Probably. Probably. Maybe. Is there [01:17:00] anything you guys would've done differently on this trip? Nope. You can't fill all your tags and then, Think about doing something differently if, cuz if by, if for some reason that we hadn't have gotten on any turkeys like that Thursday morning, Parker, if you and I had not have seen or heard that gobbler, we probably could have let, we probably would've left.

We probably have went somewhere else and who knows would've happened. We might not have killed nothing. Could I have not sh shot the sixth Turkey that morning and gone, us spent another day at my cousin's place and on the private and us tried to tootle around and kill a gobbler. Yeah.

That, that was a possibility. Apparently while we were off taking pictures, there was a gang of Jakes harassing a gobbler out in their pasture. So it was a, it was a possibility, but just to keep the trip moving and, keep the theme going. I wouldn't change anything.[01:18:00] I'm happy with every shot I took.

I think I think when I go back to Montana or go back to somewhere similar, maybe I'll have areas that I'll focus on differently. Things that we figured out just from the time that we spent there. Things to key on maybe even areas that I might go to that might be different than what we went to.

Cuz again I feel this way about a lot of turkeys, a lot of turkeys feel like right place, right time with maybe a few little things sprinkled in there that you did right. But a lot of it feels like timing. And so I, I definitely felt like that on this trip, but I also think there was enough turkeys that if we had started on this public, we would've filled tags on that public as well.

You know what I mean? If we'd just started there and we didn't have the private, obviously we couldn't have killed as many as we did, but like I, I think we could have, I think we could have pieced it together if we had a week to hunt that place and had [01:19:00] some jam up, some more jam up Turkey hunts. I think it was good enough to do that.

But I might hunt somewhere different next time. Maybe take three guns next time. Yeah. Three guns might be a thing, but Jacob just over there adding tally marks to my gun, so it didn't hurt my feelings Too bad. Yeah. That was awesome. That old Mossbergs had a heck of a season. It did. Yeah. Mossberg christened it perfectly. Yep. Bad shot that Parker put on that last Turkey he killed. He annihilated that head on that thing. It was, it's a good feeling when your stuff works. You know what I mean? I have a lot of. Issues during bow season. I know Adam, you've had some issues with gun stuff this year.

Like I look back at this season with that new gun. I'm like, man it worked well. Like it worked flawlessly. I didn't have any jams. No real issues, man. That's a great little Turkey gun. A really nice little Turkey gun. [01:20:00] Thank you, Adam, for your suggestion, your recommendation. It's one thing I did right this year.

Hey, you did something. You did at least one thing right? In Texas. So you can't I got that. I got that one. Yep. Polished off. We guys, what other thoughts Do you guys have any imparting wisdom? We've been on here a while. I would say find a way to listen to Joey Bell call softly I feel like we should do a, we should do a clinic.

And let Joey Bell do a soft call clinic because it's just beautiful. It's just an absolutely pleasurable experience. Hearing him whistle and wine and do those things, I learned a lot just by that short amount of time listening to Joey do those soft calls. So I will close with that also find you a friend like Jacob who you know, will say things like, I'll freaking shoot a Jake.

Heck yeah, I'll shoot a Jake [01:21:00] film this crap, because that makes things fun as well. I had a blast shows no emergency. So much fun. So much fun. I'm still living on cloud nine from that trip. So much. You're out west people. Yeah, go out west. Make it happen someday. Ain't on the calendar. Make it happen. It's not, it was fun living vicariously through you guys and I'm honestly glad we haven't had a debrief until now.

So it was fresh, great stories. I feel like I pulled a little bit of wisdom and some nuggets here and there, so mission accomplished on my side, so I really appreciate you guys doing that. Jacob, man, it's been fun having you. Dude, we back. We're gonna back together seeing how we live so close. I know, man.

L lets meet up and let's drink some coffee or something and talk about it. I'm down. I'm down. Y'all can't hunt turkeys anymore cuz it's dumb boys. It's dumb for all of us. It's dumb. Nah, don't worry. We got deer season coming up. I know Joey [01:22:00] doesn't care anything about it, but I think me and Adam can collaborate on some areas around up here.

Yeah. Hey, me and Parker. Have hunted some of the same areas that come to find out. So has Adam's probably hunted. He's been in that same spot, no spots. There were originally Adam's spots, originally Adam's spots. And Parker actually just been telling Jacob every, I don't think I told Jacob all the spots.

I don't think Parker's hunted any of my spots up here. I think we've been, I've hunted some of the spots. Parker's hunted. No, we have cross paths a little bit. You mean Walden's puddle isn't your spot? Because I've got a stand right up there right now. Yeah, Adam. Honestly, we've talked about this a lot too these days with OnX and Spartan Forge and all the, just good mapping software, people who are serious about it and spend a lot of time.

You're gonna end up with same pins. Like I've been to spots where I'm like, I'm probably the first person here. And then I talked, just happened to [01:23:00] meet the other person who has this pin, which tells me there's probably like 27,000 other people that have that same pin marked. We all want to think that we've, we're the first person to set foot there since native Americans Oh yeah.

Are about to kill like a monster. But no, every Joe Blow that's got OnX or Spartan, they see it too. Yeah. For the most part, it's just whether they're willing to walk to it or put in the effort. That's the main thing. Yeah. Go the distance to, to find these areas instead, or buy a boat in our case.

Wow. That bulb. But even then, that's putting in a lot of extra effort and then it's not so much. Just getting to that spot. It's killing something and then getting it back out. Do you really wanna put up with that? Not a lot of people do. They're like, oh, I'm not gonna shoot a dough back here.

Or, a six point or whatever like that. I'll shoot a Jake, I'll shoot a Jake.[01:24:00]

Well guys this has been a lot of fun for the listeners out there, thanks for hanging out with us during Turkey season. This has been just for me personally, like I've loved every week getting on here, talking to you guys, debriefing on Turkey hunts, talking to people around the country about what they're doing right and wrong.

And, we're gonna keep it going. I don't know what our cadence is gonna be like over the next, eight months, but there will be more more podcast dropping. I'll get on here every week until next March. I don't know about anybody else. I promise my wife I would not do it every week, but if we need to, we will.

Oh man, it's been blast fellas. Thanks for thoughts by Joey Bell. It's been 183 days since I last killed a Turkey. If this is his fix, then that's, that works. It's be like three people listening to it during deer season. God bless. [01:25:00] Joey's just gonna be talking to himself. Hey, Joey just has, I talk to myself anyway, Joey has it a freezer full of like Turkey heads that he goes and stares at a serial killer, God.

I got a lodge bowl with SNS on it. Oh my goodness. To everybody out, there's been listening, subscribe, follow, put on those notifications because if you're turning off Turkey season now for deer season, I know some of you are. Go ahead and do that. Don't miss out on the next episodes that drop, especially when we get closer to January and wanna miss that cuz you'll be ready to kill turkeys like we will.

We'll all be wanting to hear that first Gobble can't wait. Dang. All right, boys, let's sign off. Hey, thanks for listening to the Limb Hanger Turkey Hunting podcast. Hope you tune in next week for another great conversation about our favorite bird in the woods as the Wild Turkey. We'll talk to you guys next week.[01:26:00]

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