Turkey Season This Weekend!

The time is near and I’m ready! Turkey season opens with the first season this weekend and I’m more than prepared to head out into the timbers to chase some gobblers. I have my shotgun sparkly clean, shells for it, my camouflage gear laid out, and my hands retuned to the use of my slate and box calls for the turkey. I have my blind and a total of a half dozen turkey decoys, which my cousin and I have used throughout the years and past seasons. There is nothing left, but to get out in the woods and reclaim that monster tom that I missed on the last day in the past season.

I just don’t think there is any type of hunting that is so alluring as turkey hunting. Waking up in the near dead of night it seems and putting bulky camouflage on from head to our toes, driving over to the spot and finding a spot to hide the truck. After that from memory finding the spot to set up your position and decoys in complete darkness and then waiting for the right time to start calling in the tom as the songbirds around you start to add such a noise it seems that you can barely hear the tom as he approaches (if your lucky). There is just nothing quite like it in the world.

But back to this big tom… I have heard him and seen him on several hunts, but I have never had enough luck or skill to ever get him to come in like the smaller toms and jakes so easily do. However this time was different I had be studying this turkey for two years and I had somehow predicted where he would come out, which is almost the same travel path he follows daily it seems. I felt ambitious and I set up on that spot to see if I could get a chance at bringing him under the bead of my twelve gauge. He nearly followed the path exactly as I had hoped and set up for and he was also escorting another nice tom alongside him. I had my cousin with me and he also had his shotgun, so what a great opportunity this was turning out to be. We both were licking our chops as these turkeys were quickly closing in on our positions, but they both stopped and walked away from us about 5 to 8 yards from the outer most reach of my comfortable shotgun range. I didn’t dare a shot and I let this legend of a turkey go as I might be able to get him another day (of course when he is even bigger! Ha). I will keep you posted on the hunt and hopefully success this weekend, good luck to you as well this turkey season and remember to keep your stick on the ice.

Spawn

The annual walleye opener has come again this year, with last year myself marking the catch of the biggest walleye I’ve ever caught before. The female walleye laden with its spawn eggs was over eight pounds. It was also the first day that I caught some saugeyes, which I have never really had any opportunities of catching because I don’t live near any huge amounts of water like the Mississippi, which was what I was fishing on last year for the 2008 walleye opener. The ice has almost completely melted off and the water is beginning to warm up once again, and this means one thing for fisherman all across America… the spawn! And the precursor to the much warmer spawn cycles of largemouth bass, crappies and catfish is the spawn of the walleye. This spawn is so hard to pinpoint as the spring weather unpredictability has such a major impact on the walleye’s at this time. Only the elite walleye fisherman is able to pattern these highly sought after fish with consistent success, and humbly I must say I’m not among that number.

This year over spring break, which is next week for me (!), I know I will be trying my luck at some pre- spawning walleyes on the dam of Pleasant Creek lake north of Palo and I will also get the boat out for some hopefully good walleye action on some rocky points, hidden brush piles, and on the causeway of Ponderosa lake near Montezuma. It doesn’t take too long to know if whether the spawn is occurring or if it is still too early. But I do know that the walleye do spawn awfully early and in some very frigidly, cold water in Iowa and I hope that I can catch a couple of walleyes. Besides for the catfish feeding frenzy right after ice- out not many other species will bite at this time, except sometimes for some absolutely lunker largemouth bass, which I was fortunate of catching one time either two or three years ago right after the ice melted off of a very small southern Iowa pond if I do recall correctly.

However now I really want to be able to get at least a couple of these walleyes for the frying pan, as long as they are not an egg- laden female. Of course, I will not object to catching and battling one of these huge walleyes and taking a few pictures of it to put onto the blog for you all to see. In the meantime good luck, good fishing, and I’ll see you out on the lake.

My New Groundhog

The last two weeks or so the weather has been absolutely phenomenal. The days have been marked with sunshine, clear blue skies and clearly the best of all warm. The weather has remained relatively constant and the days have been ranging from fifty degrees to a near record high yesterday of seventy degrees on Saint Patrick’s Day. It feels so great to be outside and actually feel the warmth of the sun with a shirt and shorts on. The signs of spring are all emerging from the grass becoming greener to track, soccer, and tennis teams playing outside. Another one of these signs of spring however has emerged quite noticeably in my own back yard.

And that is my groundhog. I first saw him last fall, but only occasionally (once in September and the other time in early November if I remember correctly). At that time this groundhog was huge it looked like a brown dog when I first glanced at him, nearly forty pounds of brown- furred groundhog meat. The outdoorsmen I am, the day after watching him for a few minutes, I decided to follow the path that I thought he had followed. After getting to the spot where I first saw him I tracked where I thought he had went the other day and lo and behold after a quick walk I found a mound of fresh dirt and a hole leading into the ground on the side of this mound. It didn’t take much to conclude that this was the entrance to groundhog’s home. However, that was the last I saw of my groundhog for the winter.

But with these last two weeks I have seen this same groundhog everyday after I get home from track practice. After a quick observation I noticed that my neighbor, the groundhog, had lost some serious weight and that every time I saw him he was looking for a source of green plant growth, which is almost completely absent in my yard at that time. So for the last couple of days I’ve been saving the potato skins and lettuce scraps from my family’s meals and have been putting it out near the groundhog’s hole for him to eat. The next day after the first time I put these vegetable scraps out for him I noticed him gorging himself on some lettuce leaves.

Who knows, maybe he will become like a dog in a backyard and I will have one popular pet when Groundhog’s Day 2010 comes around I hope (as long as I keep feeding him the lettuce that he likes so much anyways).

Track Begins

Track started three weeks ago and is now in full swing. The Kennedy Cougars had their first meet this last Monday (March 9) at the Wartburg College indoor track arena and by the results I think we are going to be an overall a mid- rate team. We sent two throwers to the competition and the top throw was thirty-five feet, I think the throwers are going to have a very long year. I was unable to go after I scratched three times in the “throw- off” to determine who would be going to the Wartburg meet. I think it is evident that we lack our top throwers this year because we have almost no senior class of shot- put and discus throwers. We have two seniors, but they have no past experience at varsity meets and nearly all of the junior and sophomore field team members can throw farther than them. Last year, at the last JV meet which was at Iowa City High I was placed very high after I tossed the shot- put forty- two feet and nine inches. I hope to be throwing this again at the next throw-off, as I’m the only field team member that has ever thrown forty feet or farther at an actual competition. By the end of the season I hope to be reaching forty- six feet on average for throw, which would be at the low end of being able to really compete and place at varsity competitions. To advance to the Drake Relays or to state many a time my coach has told us that we have to be throwing fifty feet at a minimum. Next year, returning as a senior I really hope that I can go to these prestigious competitions and even be able to place and get some “clinkers” (medals) at the Drake Relays and/ or state.

I need to focus much harder on my short-term goals though. These include not scratching and getting to the last two of the indoor track meets and also returning to forty- two feet on average per throw and improving to forty- six feet per throw as the track season progresses.