For the second year, I met a very good friend of mine (Zach) up at his family's property in NW Missouri for a weekend of chasing birds, helping his Uncle with the demolition of a bridge, and just some rest and relaxation.

The primary goal of the weekend was to remove 30 year old wooden planks from a field access bridge that the land owner had actually broken through with a combine this past fall.  Within a couple hours of hard labor, the wooden planks were removed and the bridge is ready for new planking that will be placed early next week.  Zach's uncle was definitely appreciative of our hard work and couldn't believe how fast Zach and I were able to get the job done.

The second goal was to put Zach on a Missouri gobbler, unfortunately we had to face extremely windy and cold conditions - not an ideal situation for turkey hunters.  The first morning was quiet....not a single gobble from the roost.  After a couple of hours in the blind, we decided to try a spot and stalk with the windy conditions.  As I slowly crested a small hill, I was surprised to see a white head not more than 10 yards away looking the other direction.  Zach and I hunkered down in the CRP and threw out some soft calling.  We were setup no more than 20 yards from this bird (just on the other side of the small ridge), but could not get a response.  After 10 or 15 minutes, Zach slowly started to belly crawl threw the CRP and after 15 yards he was was greeted to a nested gobbler busting out of the CRP no more than five feet from his face.  Everything happened so fast, there was no opportunity for an ethical shot.  But to get five feet from a wild turkey is something that does not happen every day!

The rest of the day was a bust trying to spot and stalk and the birds were simply laying down in the underbrush and were unresponsive to calling.  However, that night after a delicious campfire meal, we were able to roost seven different birds along a sheltered creek bottom.



































The next morning we got setup within 100 yards of the area where the birds had roosted the night before and got setup in a deadfall along a creek.


We heard many gobbles that morning, but none close to our setup.  Not sure what happened during the night, but only two of the birds were still there at sunrise and neither decided to fly down into our field.  Even though we didn't put a tag on a bird this weekend, we still had a great time enjoying the outdoors.  Hopefully we'll be able to continue the tradition for many years to come.