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A big group of my hunting buddies and I drove up to the San Carlos Reservation on Friday morning to chase turkeys for the weekend. We got to our campsite around 2:30pm and got the wall tent and kitchen set up. After consulting OnX, we figured out where each group was going and hit the road for a little evening scouting. It was the first weekend of the first season on the San Carlos, so we couldn’t actually hunt until Saturday morning. My hunting partner and I opted for a spot close to camp, hoping to minimize the drive time the next morning. We drove our road from about 4pm until just before sundown, without locating any birds (about 10 miles out-and-back with no gobbles). We had the windows down, heading back towards camp when I thought I heard a gobble. We stopped the car and listened for 5 minutes… nothing. I was sure I heard a tom! My hunting partner climbed back in the rig, probably thinking I was pulling his chain. He shut the door and BOOM - gobbles. Perfect. We had at least two toms roosted and were even able to see one of them roosted halfway up a ponderosa. We dropped a waypoint on OnX and made our way back to camp. After a good night’s sleep, we were up and at ‘em at 4:15am with coffee and premade breakfast burritos on the wood stove. While we were packing the truck, it started to snow (NOT IN THE FORECAST!). We made the short drive to our spot, parking 600 yards from where we had roosted the birds the night before, and heard the gobblers going off! That made it easier to pick a good spot to set up in the dark. The snow was really starting to come down as we made it into our spot and set up our decoys. I only started hunting turkeys in the past few years, so I was unsure how the weather would affect the birds. But I was convinced our toms would just hangout on the roost all day because I sure as heck wanted to be back in the warm truck! We made a few quiet yelps to let the gobblers know where we were and sat back. They gobbled for the next 30 minutes, without us prompting them. We felt like we were in a good position and made another quiet yelp sequence to keep them intrigued. 15 minutes before sunrise we heard some gobbles 100 yards to the north of where our birds were roosted. It was either another set of toms that we hadn’t known about OR our birds had gotten down out of the roost without us hearing them. It ended up being the latter! The next 5 minutes was chaos, with the gobbles getting closer and closer. Each time they gobbled, I could feel it more and more in my chest. I understand the thunder chicken moniker now! I began seeing movement 75 yards out, which was a feat with the snow coming down in droves. I didn’t know it in the moment, but I think the snow covered up our decoys making it harder for the three incoming toms to know where we were. They missed the “X” and were moving to my left. In doing so, they forced me to rotate my sitting position and turn my shotgun towards the birds who were in the open at 25 yards. Aiming at the middle tom, I squeezed the trigger and CLICK. While trying to be quiet at the truck earlier that morning, I guess I hadn’t let the bolt slam all the way closed on my 3.5” shell and had a misfire. Trying to not the let moment pass me up, I cycled the bolt on my shotgun and got another round in the chamber. With all that noise, the turkeys knew something was up. They were confused and fixin to leave, but not before I got a shot off! What a cool morning! I had my first tom on the ground after an exciting hunt and the pictures in the snow will remind of this weekend forever. Side note: we filled my buddies tag in a similar fashion on Sunday morning, after it had warmed up a bunch. I’m hooked - and we will be back in the turkey woods next spring. CHEERS and thanks for reading! -MM

Try to use fapped in a sentence at work and get away with it. I was working on a server that fapped. After I fapped in the bathroom, I went to lunch. The project description is incredible, I fapped over the graphs.

Disappointed they didn’t address the desert units more. The 40’s are scorched earth.

Only problem is, they have no concept of either rifle or archery success rates...

Sad to see but they have to do something. I’d like to see them keep coues as otc but limit mule deer in some units

https://pope-young.org/information/news_detail.asp?news=245 I remember back when the typical record came from Sitgreaves Mtn

Where do you come up with this $hitt? I had to look it up. 😂

Probably less hunting opportunities but I’m all for going to a draw. With the influx of people I don’t see how the desert mule deer can stand much more pressure. I didn’t get to hunt much but from what little I saw and the friends that I talked to said that it was an absolute circus.

I LOVE that 27 may go to a draw. WAAAAAY to many people this last year.

Mandatory harvest reporting seems like such a no-brainer to me. I can't understand how this isn't being done.

Imagine if hunters used a complicated mathematical formula for duck and dove limits. They have no problems using simple math when they wanna hang a fella for a violation but when an unknown number of deer are killed across the season. Well we know how that number is calculated. Fairy dust and a fake imaginary number. They look at the bottom line. Gold coins

Two solid days in so far this week. Legs yesterday and chest/arms today. 20 min if cardio each day.

They want nothing to do with us. Had a very similar interaction. I wish a boycott for 1 year to show our value as hunters. But that wont happen. Unless California ban team rolls in.

Just be glad we have a seperate system unlike colorado. Those guys will legally come harass you in the name of being a tree hugging hippy who is jurisdictional in both forest and game management. Arizona is still blessed.

I’ve got a 02 Suzuki DRZ 400 I’ll sell you for 3k if your interested

I will never again try to work with those arrogant Richard heads

Great news. I just wish they’d put more units for draw. Especially for non residents.

I fapped all day

Sale pending

No elk in 5B

Re-reading it made more sense to me. They cut the total tags in 33 by 850 if my math was correct. (33 has always seemed to have way too many tags, so again that’s probably a good thing) In my example the 200 tags proposed was a -225 decrease from last year.

I’m planning on commenting and have made my voice heard about several issues during calls to the public. im just torn on this issue, don’t know how to feel about it. I am somewhat glad and encouraged by this change. I would not be upset if they made the entire state a draw for archery deer. Would be like a choose your weapon for your deer hunt. I’m an archery hunter and think this would greatly limit the amount of quasi archery hunters. People who wouldn’t normally archery hunt would put in for rifle hunts. Less people in the field during archery season. I also like to put in for quality, hard to draw rifle tags and when I don’t get drawn I fall back to my true passion of archery hunting. So yes, I will be commenting but still trying to decide what I want to say.

Was she sick from the ____ or was it the flu?

I remember Grayghost85 saying he put tape around the outside sensor and that helped. Pretty much guaranteed it’s wind, wind usually lays down some at night