My First Rio Grande Turkey & A Close Call With Wild Hogs

This past weekend up in Coleman County, Texas I bagged my first Rio Grande turkey! It was a great overall experience and a great opportunity to test out our new Texas Skeleton Skinning Knife. I got up to the property to scout Saturday morning knowing that my best opportunity would come the following morning on Sunday. I spent just over seven hours hiking, calling, resting, and hiking again before seeing anything. It didn’t help that the wind was howling at almost 20 mph and every cactus, mesquite and scrub brush was moving all over the place.

Around 4pm I got my first break. A Rio hen busted out of the brush and into the road as I was trimming growth off of some of the mesquite trees hanging over the road. I tracked her down for about an hour but never got close enough to see where she was going or if there was a Tom around. My guess was she was headed back to the roost after getting some loving earlier in the day!

After taking a break and getting some food I decided to hike around an area I had been in the AM to see if anything had moved now that it was getting later in the day. Something had moved, a big sounder of hogs! With the wind in my favor I was able to get within about 25 yards of the hogs and tried to pick off one of the smaller ones. Unfortunately my shotgun was setup with an extra-full turkey choke & #4 turkey shot. So I changed the choke, dropped in one buckshot shell (my first mistake) and then belly crawled to get a little closer. Unfortunately b rushing through this I didn’t load the gun correctly and when I sat-up to shoot… CLICK. Damn it! I laid back down and removed all of the turkey shells and loaded the buckshot again. This time the sow & the boar closest to me knew something was up and came over to inspect.

Amazingly the sow decided I wasn’t a threat and went back to looking for food. The boar however wasn’t so easily fooled and I ended up taking a poorly aimed & rushed shot that grazed his leg and hear. This caused all heck to break loose and the hogs scattered. It was a missed opportunity but I was glad to be unharmed and kicking myself for making such a dumb mistake.

After licking my wounds back at the truck David arrived and we went looking for the hogs to see if they were still in the area. After a few hours of hiking and glassing up some deer we decided to call it a night and head into town for some Mexican food. Just as we were packing up to leave I closed the door on my truck and it triggered a LOUD gobble! We quickly grabbed our guns and ran over to where we thought it was coming from. We found the huge tom about 400 yards away just on the other side of the fence. Since it was getting dark we decided to let it be and didn’t get any closer. I knew where I was going to hunt the next day.

On Sunday morning we arrived about 20 minutes before sun-rise and it took all of 30 seconds after getting out of the truck to hear not one, not two but at least 4 or more toms going to town. It was music to my ears. I hiked down to the pond close to where we had seen the tom the night before and just at the edge of the water there were 5 toms strutting around. It was amazing to see and to be honest just dumb luck! I setup my decoys twice out of range until finally belly crawling up onto a knoll that overlooked the area where they turkeys were congregating.

I setup my hen & jake and found a large flat rock to lay belly down on for the next 45 minutes. During that time the toms were constantly calling and I could tell at least two of them were headed my way. I was tormented in my head about how much to call, should I keep calling but decided that since they were still responding I’d keep calling but trying to keep it quite & quick. Not long after that two toms came in behind my position (I was laying between the decoys and where the turkeys where coming from) and started to really turn on the gobbles. I could her them fighting and then it happened! One of them moved up on my right headed straight for my decoy setup. He got within about 20 yards of the decoys but since I was positioned the way I was it was a 10 yard shot for me. My shooting was much more accurate than the day before and withing an hour of getting out of my truck I had my first wild turkey!

Overall it was a great experience and scouting paid off. I got a little lucky for sure but if it hadn’t been for the time scouting and being out there for a full day I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have hunted in that spot and been as successful. Now to figure out some wild turkey recipes!

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