Turkey Lurkey Do

I drew out for a turkey tag along with my bro-in-law, Rocky, this year. Neither of us had ever hunted turkeys before and really had no clue what we were doing. But, we read and talked to people and tried to gain some clue into how to do it before the hunt started.

Friday morning we headed out for the hunt. We spent most of the day scouting a few areas. About sun-down, we heard some gobbling down in a canyon we were watching. We started to move down the canyon towards the sound, calling every so often so we could hear where they were. As it turned out, the turkeys were moving up the canyon towards us.

At one point, they gobble and I'm almost right on top of them, but I can't see them. I quickly sat down right in the trail to give myself some cover in the hopes I could see them before they saw me. As it turned out, where I sat down just happened to be under a huge Ponderosa Pine tree...the largest one in the entire canyon. Turkeys like to roost in the tops of large trees for the night for protection. So, I'm sitting there and I finally see some movement in the bushes. I get a quick glimpse of the turkeys and they were about 50 yards away. They moved back into the bushes, then I hear wings flapping and they fly into the top of the tree I'm sitting under.

Now I'm stuck. I can't shoot them out of the tree and I can't just get up and walk away because they'll see me and we'll lose our chance of getting them. I sat there for a while, with 3 male turkeys (toms) gobbling in the tree directly above me, trying to decide what to do. Eventually, I rolled over onto my belly and tried to crawl away as stealthily as possible. It took about 2 hours for my adrenaline to burn off.

We headed back to the area before daylight the next morning, and they were still in the tree. We set up our decoys and started calling. They are gobbling back, but then they fly out of the tree in nearly the opposite direction of where we were. Either they saw us, or they had probably seen me the night before and were a little nervous. Regardless, we had to start stalking them again.

We started working up the sidehill they'd flown to. I was working up the hill from underneath them, and Rocky worked his way from the side. We were getting close, but I still couldn't see them. Finally, I was crawling on my hands and knees up the hill for aobut the last 75 yards. Finally, I could see movement in the bushes. Then, a tom walks out about 30 yards away and looks at me and then walks back into the bushes. I'm in my camo, but I'm not sure whether he saw me or not. I was kind of waiting to see if Rocky was going to shoot because he was even a little closer than I was. The tom walked out again and looked at me and started moving down the hill a little bit towards me. I decided that if one of us didn't shoot that they were going to see me and take off. The tom moved behind a bush and I raised my shotgun while he couldn't see the movement. When he walked out again, I shot and got my first turkey!

It was one of the funnest hunts I've ever done. I can see how guys get addicted to turkey hunting.

I Could Have Sworn It Was Mothers' Day

So, a few days ago Brandi calls me at the pharmacy and says, "I have your Fathers' Day present and I'm not sure how to hide it. Should I just give it to you now?" I replied that it would be fun, but that whatever it is, she should wait.

Then, today, as I'm leaving for work, she says, "Well, I have a surprise for you this afternoon."

After I get off work, we head to Brandi's mom's house for Mothers' Day dinner. My brother-in-law pulls up and has a new Kawasaki Teryx on a trailer. This didn't strike me as terribly odd because he works at the dealership that sells them. I just assumed he must be delivering one or demoing it or something. Brandi and I had looked at them a few times and had talked about how much fun one would be. I saw it on the trailer and jokingly told my brother-in-law that he could drop that off at my house if he wanted.

Well, a few minutes later Gavin and Pacie come running up and say, "Dad, come look at your new wheeler!" I laughed and said, "Yeah, wouldn't that be fun." And then I notice everyone is staring at me and Brandi has her camera out taking pictures.

Needless to say, I love it and have the most wonderful wife in the world...and not just because she surprised me with a new Teryx. Now, I've just got to figure out what I'm going to get her for Fathers' Day.

Will The Mud Ever End?

So, I woke up this morning and laid in bed planning out my day in my mind. Construction on our fence is supposed to start on Thursday, so I had a few things I needed to get finished for that. I get dressed and head outside to dig part of the footing and:

"Surprise"!!!

There's a huge sink hole in the front of our house. I walk out of our garage and the first thing I see is one of our big landscaping rocks sitting on a 45-degree angle. I then notice that a bunch of my paving stones have disappeared along with one of our bushes. There's a huge hole right next to our sidewalk where our sprinkler system ties into our water main. I step out onto our lawn and it completely caves in. Holy crap...Or I said some other choice words along those lines.

So, I begin tearing our edging, raking back decorative rock, pulling up paving stones, etc. I finally get everything uncovered and what a mess. All the dirt has washed away and left this huge cavern under a big chunk of our lawn and flower bed. I mean BIG...I could stick my entire shovel down into it and still not reach the bottom.

I then start shoveling down to the water main. Luckily my father-in-law showed up about that time and we dug and dug. Shoveling dirt is one thing, but mud is a whole other fun ball game. My neighbor came over and helped. We finally reached the main and discovered that the pipe to our sprinkling system had slipped out of the elbow where it connects to the water main. I guess not enough glue was used or maybe the joint was a little dirty or something. Regardless, basically a 1" pipe was running full-bore for probably 12 hours.

So, we got it fixed. I then proceed to transplant the sod I tore out to our backyard, figuring that we might as well use it for something. My father-in-law then starts pounding away on our lawn with the bucket of his backhoe to cave in the sink hole.

And, that's where we sit tonight. The cavern has been caved in and the pipe is fixed. We've got to get more dirt to fill the hole back in. Then we'll compact it, put edging back in, rebuild flower beds, place decorative rock back in them, relay paving stones, and lay sod. Yee haw....

I can't tell you how good watering my lawn with a hose and sprinkler sounded today when I was staring into this abyss that used to be my front yard. We were finally just getting our front yard about where we wanted it...bushes were growing and I actually had to mow our lawn for the first time last week.

Oh well....guess it could have been worse.