I went out with one of my old turkey hunting buddies and his brother-in-law, who was a first-time turkey hunter. We were all a little bit tired due to a couple of early morning wake-ups and late night socializing but we were persistent and got out early to one of my regular hunting locations. We had a good mile walk to get back to the area we wanted to be in and the weather was not really cooperating this morning.

Kansas gets its name from the Indian word "Kanza" meaning "People of the South Wind" and this morning was sure living up to its reputation. The wind hadn't dropped below 20 mph all night with some gusts much stronger than that. We didn't really expect to hear much off the roost but instead set up in a relatively calm clearing along the creek. It was very windy and my decoys kept blowing around and the hen finally blew over. I decided to get up and move them since they did not look good. While I was getting up, some birds finally flew down to the east side of the clearing. Of course they spooked since I was out walking about. We sat there and called for a little while more and then decided to move along the creek bottom to try and locate some gobblers.

The birds have been relatively quiet this week. They have lost most of their hens and the weather has been really cloudy and humid all of the time. I don't think we've hit our second gobbling peak when the hens are all nesting although I'm sure seeing lots of gobblers by themselves early in the morning. I'm beginning to think we won't really have the second strong gobbling period just because the weather has been really nasty during this time.

We strolled along the creek, calling every once in awhile to see if we could get a response. We were coming close to a clearing when we heard a gobble very close. With the wind, I expected they were within 100 yards and I knew we were very close to an opening ahead. We crept in a little closer through the trees and I called on the paddle box. At least 2 birds gobbled back strong. We were kind of in a bad position but we were in a little washout gully by the creek which did provide good cover. I did not think we could move forward anymore since the opening was right in front and the birds seemed to be about 70 – 80 yards away across the creek in the opening around the corner of the trees we were in. In hindsight, I wish we would have pulled back a little ways from the clearing edge and set up a little better.

Instead, we decided to set up right where we were at and we put our first-time hunter up above next to a tree to hopefully get a shot. I also kind of got ready since we thought there were 2 birds and I thought maybe I could double up on a bird after he shot.

I called several times and gave them a little cutting also. They were fired-up and started moving towards us. I thought they would come out to the middle of the opening that was about 50 yards across and give us a shot at getting 2 birds. When they came out, we saw there were 3 gobblers and we were hoping to get them closer. The turkeys, however, didn’t follow our plan very closely and they came in through the trees on the far side of the clearing. Our designated shooter was screened off by some brush and couldn’t get a shot. I really didn’t have a shot either until they had circled around some and started climbing the hill on their way off. I could only see the lead gobbler so I took the shot and dropped the dominant bird that had been doing most of the gobbling.

We tried to follow up and call the other 2 birds back in but they didn’t seem very interested and we eventually walked out. The gobbler was a nice 3 year-old who had the most battle scars I've ever seen on a bird. His breast had several nasty spur wounds and bruises. He also must have been hard at work breeding hens since he had very little fat on his breast sponge and he only weighed 19 pounds which is light for a bird in this area.

The turkeys have apparently lost their hens except for maybe a few of the hens that got their nests burned out who are re-nesting. This hunting area is in the Flint Hills and the landowners typically burn their pastures every year to keep the cedar trees and brush from taking over the grass. This is fine and the burning seems to help the turkeys also but some years they are a little late and the burning does take out a lot of turkey nests.