Turkey Hunting The Missouri River Breaks Of South Dakota

with Majestic Ranch Hunting Service

by dan wennerlind

As I peered out of the double bull archery blind, where I was sharing my morning hunt with outfitter Randy Odenbach, my heart started to beat a little bit faster as we could both tell the birds were starting to fly down from the roost now. I knew it was only a matter of time before we would be covered up in turkeys. This was an exciting hunt for me since not only would I have an opportunity to harvest a trophy Merriam tom, but this was my first archery spring turkey hunt. That being said I was confident that Randy would be able to put a nice gobbler well with in bow range. We were hunting out of a very comfortable blind, overlooking one of the new “Pretty Boy” tom decoys and several good looking hen decoys including a stuffer King-Coy hen decoy from Kingsley Outpost Company. Everything looked perfect. We were set up on top of the ridge along a cow pasture that the birds had been using every morning for the past few months. My counterpart Ryan and his guide Rod Fortuna “Tuna” were set up about a ½ mile away on top of another knoll that was covered in fresh turkey tracks from the day before.

Finally at around 10:00 am a very nice mature tom came strutting up from behind the blind. He was 22 pounds if he was an ounce and had a beard at least 10 inches in length. As he moved into range, he turned to strut for a few of the ladies behind him and I drew back my bow. I took aim and let one rip. Feathers flew everywhere and the big bird jumped about a foot. As I tried to notch a second arrow the tom limped away down over the hill and out of range. Now it was a waiting game. Randy felt good about the hit but being my first turkey with a bow I was still a little nervous from all of the stories I have heard of birds never recovered. Randy stated that we needed to give it about 2 hours to be sure the tom had time to bleed out & die before we went after it.

In the mean time we had three more jakes come from the left side of the blind and two more hens from the right side. There were turkeys everywhere! About 30 minutes later we counted 5 big gobblers surrounding the blind about 40 yards out but elected not to do any calling, hoping they would make their way up to Ryan and “Tuna” who were still hunting just up the trail from us. As we enjoyed the morning spectacle I continued to be amazed with the number of turkeys that were located on the property. In every direction I looked, I could see birds moving up and down the hillsides.

Finally noon came and it was time to try and recover the tom I had arrowed. We found my arrow with out too much trouble. It looked to be a good hit with blood and feathers meshed into it but after over an hour of searching, we determined that I must have shot just a little high and missed the vitals. It was a tough loss for me as one of the things about hunting that upsets me the most is losing wounded game. But with no blood trail and no bird in site there was not much more we could do.

That evening as Randy and I watched Ryan and “Tuna” from our blind about a ½ mile away, we watched about 25 turkeys work the hillside that they were set up on. All afternoon the turkeys kept moving in between us inside the wood line and now they were finally coming out of the safety of the trees and getting ready to fly back down to the roost. About a ½ hour before sunset the troop moved inside the kill zone for Ryan and we watched as he let an arrow fly. He immediately connected and the entire flock jump up and ran about 15 yards. We could tell from our vantage point that Ryan had connected on a nice tom. Then about a minute later we saw another arrow fly and this time “Tuna” connected on another big Merriam gobbler. We found later that even though the guides do not normally hunt while with their clients, since there was still a big tom in range and Tuna also had a license, Ryan insisted that Tuna use his bow and take a shot at the remaining tom. As Randy and I made our way over to Ryan and “Tuna” we could tell that they were both grinning from ear to ear. What a way to end a most memorable hunt! As the sun set behind us we had a chance to take some incredible photos.