New Year’s Bow Hunt

By KentuckyHunter

New Year’s morning started out about as well as I could have expected. I made a French toast breakfast for my wife and I. In her bacon and coffee induced euphoria she suggested that maybe I would like to go hunting this afternoon so that we could have another turkey for the freezer. Soon I was suiting up and getting ready to head out. This morning was crisp and sunny. The creeks and puddles had a crust of ice coating their surface. I crunched my way through the frozen mud on the same piece of private property I had been successful on just last Saturday. I dressed somewhat warmly, with a thin set of long underwear, two long sleeved t-shirts, camo pants, and a thin camo jacket, but I still wanted to be flexible enough to draw back my bow. As I made my way up the hillside to my familiar blind location, I broke a little sweat from the effort of carrying all my gear. Once I arrived I immediately set about trimming some of the small branches away from the area to create more shooting lanes. I described the area quite a bit in my last post, but basically, I set my blind up in one of the only semi-clear sections of woods on the property. The land is completely infested with honeysuckle that often can only traversed on hands and knees. This clearing has about a 25-yard radius of fairly open ground to allow for a clean shot. This clearing is created as the creek leading up the hillside splits into two and forms a less steep bench of land about 75 yards from the crest of a large hill. I have my blind set up in the land between the two creeks at the base of a large tree and facing up the hill. About noon or so I heard a very loud crash behind my blind and down the creek. I tried to twist around in my chair, but I couldn’t tell what had made the noise right away. I kept searching out the left window, when I saw a doe making her way up the hill on the opposite side of the creek from me. From the continued sound of steps in the leaves, she had brought along a number of friends. She watched my blind for a little bit, then made a few more cautious steps. She was only about 30 yards away, but she might as well been 300 with all of the honeysuckle branches in between us. I sat and watched her for about 10 minutes and hoped she would step into a clearing I had ranged at 40 yards, but she kept tight to the cover and eventually went out of sight. I never did see the rest of the herd, but I expect they were further back in to the cover and out of sight. The next hour and a half was pretty uneventful. I made a few calls on my slate and glass calls, but they went unanswered. I shivered a little bit as the wind picked up and wrapped in through the blind’s windows. About 1:30 I looked up the creek on my right and thought I saw some people walking down the creek toward me. It is strange how your brain will fill in details for what your eyes do not see. All I could see through the thick cover was a couple of dark shapes, but my mind made the shapes out to be people in sweaters hiking through the woods. Well, the shapes soon turned into a good-sized flock of hens, jakes, and poults. Using my little slate call, I made a few purrs and clucks. The turkeys made their way closer and went to the exact same area where I had made the shot on the bird last Saturday. At this point, I became completely unglued. Amazingly, through the next series of events, I did not knock my arrow off of the rest, but nearly every other piece of bad luck was to come to pass. I set my call down and picked up my bow. I carefully fitted the arrow to the rest and began to pull back. The birds had made it to where I could see them through my right window. I attempted to turn in my chair, but the cushion that was connected to my turkey vest had wedged itself into the metal hinge of the chair and I was stuck. I had to let down on my bow in order to try and free myself. That was when the nock came loose from my arrow and it went on a slow motion arc out of the window. I looked dumbly at my nock stuck in my bow’s string, and then back out the side window. The birds were still there! Great! I pulled out another arrow from my quiver and got ready. I tried to move in the chair again, but it was still stuck like before. I decided to shift on the cushion instead trying to move the cushion on the chair. I pulled back my bow, but this time I was closer to the window opening and the rubber bracket for my quiver latched onto the window’s fabric edge. I managed to free the bracket, but lost the battle with my chair. Since I had shifted my weight to the edge of the chair, it decided to fold up and roll under the blind and down the hill. Amazingly, the birds were still there and I was still at full-draw. I scrunched up on one knee and carefully aimed at a poult that was about 20 yards away. THWUNK, I released my arrow and it careened off an unseen branch and off into the hillside. I cursed my ineptitude as I grabbed the last arrow from my quiver. This was my “reserve” arrow and the same one I had shot the turkey with on Saturday. The birds had spooked a little bit and were starting to head back up the hill. I had been kneeling on my slate call, so I poked the worst of the mud off of it and squeaked out a few feeble clucks. Again, the birds came back! These birds really wanted to die. It was just too bad that there wasn’t someone better in the woods that could have obliged them. I proceeded to attempt to draw back my bow, but the broadhead got stuck in the blind’s fabric. I freed the arrow, looked out the window,  and a good-sized jake stuck its neck up and faced me at about 25 yards. I again felt the kisser button, looked through the peep, lined up my 30-yard pin–but not before my release went off in my hand. I guess I hadn’t put the release completely in the loop and only had the loop itself. It decided to let go of its fragile hold at the exact moment I was drawing a bead on the breast of that suicidal bird. UGH!!! “Now what am I going to do?” To reinforce the fact that these birds really, really, wanted to be made into turkey nuggets, they were still out there in the brush at about 30 yards. ”Why not make this melt-down complete”, I thought as I decided to make my move. Outside my window was the nock-less arrow I had unintentionally jettisoned earlier. I stuck my arm out of the blind’s window. This was too much for even these mentally challenged turkeys to take and they scattered in all directions. One poult flew straight up into a tree directly in front of my blind. I put the nock back on the arrow, placed it on the rest. I attempted to make a few clucks on my slate, and birds answered all over the hillside. I started to draw on the poult, but it took the answers to my calls as a sign to head in another direction and flew uphill and out of sight. I sat disgusted for a few minutes, then got out of the blind and started to look for my arrows. I searched fruitlessly for 20 minutes. “Was it possible that I hit one of the birds and it walked off with one of my arrows in it?”, I wondered to no one in particular. After 45 minutes of walking up and down the honeysuckle-covered hills, I gave up and started looking for my arrows again. I shuffled my feet slowly through the leaves looking for the bright orange and yellow  fletching of my arrow. Finally, I found one of the arrows but it was clean of any sign. Five minutes later, I kicked up the other arrow likewise devoid of any blood. Crestfallen, I folded up my pop-up blind and headed back down the hill. As I trudged along the trail I had one clear thought amongst all of the second guessing, “I think it’s time to buy a crossbow.”