A little perchin'

One of the benefits of living near Lake Erie is the excellent fishing opportunities. The lake is loaded with smallmouth bass, walleye, and yellow perch.

As the water warms up, the perch begin to congregate in HUGE schools, and can easily be found with a fish finder, or you can just go find the hundred or so boats (we call it the "perch pack") all anchored in the same place!

This past weekend, I met up with Chris, Steve, and Greg and we headed out in hopes of filling a cooler with perch. The bite has been hot and heavy lately and we knew where to look for them.

After meeting up at Chris' house to load up his truck and get the boat, we headed to the bait shop and launch. With 8 dozen emerald shiners in buckets, we launched and headed out onto the lake.

Upon reaching the perch pack, and seeing the size of the swells, I knew I should've taken some motion sickness medication, but it was too late, I'd just have to tough it out as long as possible.

Once a good clump of fish showed up on the fish finder, we dropped the anchor, baited up our crappie rigs (allowing us to catch doubles and triples) and dropped them to the bottom.

It wasn't long and fish were filling the cooler! We were mostly catching singles, but every now and then we'd get a double and Chris managed to hook a triple as shown in the picture!

Most of the fish weren't huge, they averaged in the 10" range, like the one Greg is holding in pic #3, but several that were more than 12" were caught as well.

(Steve is landing a fat little lunker in this picture->).

As the morning wore on, the bite became sporadic; at times all 4 of us would have fish on as soon as our baits hit the floor of the lake, and at others we'd all be thwiddling our thumbs waiting for the next wave of fish to feed through. When the fish were there though, the action was fast and furious!

Speaking of waves, the constant rollers were making me nauseous and I knew I wasn't going to last a whole lot longer. Earlier, I'd thought about taking motion sickness medication, but elected not too as the forecast hadn't been that bad. (I should have as although I never actually got sick, it did cut our day short.)

Seeing a boat whose captain Chris and Steve knew, we hailed them on the radio and brought them over to our location to enjoy the bite. Our cooler was filling up and we expected to limit out shortly. They pulled up along side of us to the north and were immediately into the fish as well.

Unfortunately, shortly after they arrived, the bite began to slow down, and after a count of the fish in the cooler, we found out we had punched 3 tickets, and although we could've stuck it out and tried to get our last 30 fish, we decided to call it an outing and head in. 90 fish is just about as many as anyone would want to clean anyways!

Walleyes are here!

Saturday morning found me and two friends (Greg and Steve, respectively, pictured) waking before dawn and headed to the lake with Steve's 16' center console boat, hoping to get into the walleyes.

The walleyes spend the spring in the western basin of Lake Erie (Ohio), spawing in the rivers over there and we have to wait for the water to warm up, causing them to migrate east. Fishing has been spotty at best so far, but with the warm weather, we were hoping that a wave of fish had made it to our local waters. They did!

We got on the water a little after 6 a.m., ran down the shore so we could troll over some spots we'd marked with our GPS last summer, got the rods in the water and started catching fish by 6:30!

Running 6 rods out of a small boat with 3 guys on board was hectic enough, add in several hungry walleyes hitting at the same time, and at times it was pure chaos! We lost several fish at the boat, and after some arguing, (good thing we're good friends! haha) finally figured out the best way to get the fish to the net. After that, we didn't miss netting any and the cooler began to fill up!


By the time we decided to call it quits at the end of the day, we'd boated 11 walleyes ranging in size from 16-27" and 2-7 lbs. Only 2 fish were in the 16" - 2 lbs range, with the rest being 24"+ & 4 lbs or more.

A great day on the water with 2 good friends yielded a pile of excellent meat for the table! We can't wait to do it again!

Tagged out!

After making several fruitless forays into the turkey woods, both here in Erie and back home (Youngsville), the season was beginning to wind down and Geroge and I still both had our 2nd tags in our pockets.

The birds that we'd hunted the most, and therefore knew the most about, also knew the most about us apparently, and had become very wary. We had "gently" bumped them on the roost one morning, by that I mean we didn't blow them off the roost but they definitely knew something was up. They immediately stopped what had been a gobbling frenzy, then flew down into the creek bottom (when they normally stayed on top, which is where we were waiting).

The day I hunted with my dad in Youngsville, George went back in to our usual spot near the
roost and the birds were back and vocal again. However, as soon as he made a call to them, they shut up and then flew down and headed away from him, throwing a couple courtesy gobbles his direction.

He heard birds off and on throughout the morning, but couldn't make anything happen.

Monday George and I talked and formulated a new plan. He was going to go in and try to roost the birds, as we had been informed that they were spending some time across the road now.

If he could put them to bed, we were on for in the morning. If they didn't show up, we had to come up with another option.

Just as it was getting dark, my cell phone rang. It was George, and when I answered, the first words he said to me were "We're on!" He then went on to tell me how the birds were in fact, hanging out across the road, but just a few minutes before dark, 3 big toms came running past his truck, crossed the field, and went to their normal roosts! 1 bird broke off while still in the field about 100 yards south of the main roost, while the other 2 walked within 10 yards of George in order to fly up about 60 yards from the field corner. He slipped out quietly, got to his truck, and called me. It was now time to plan our strategy since we knew the birds were going to be there in the morning.

Since it seemed like everytime we had hunted them lately, they were very wary of our presence, it seemed like the only approach was to conceal our presence completely. We'd go in early as usual, no head lamps, keep the calls put away, no decoys, and set up in that field corner. To them, it'd be just another day in the woods with no intrusion that they knew of.

At 5 AM the next morning, I roll into George's driveway and the house is DARK. OH NO! I knew he was still asleep and started calling him. His personal cell phone didn't awake him but his work phone did!

"I'M UP!!!! I'll be out in 2 minutes!!!" George hissed into the phone so as not to wake his wife. A few minutes later, he comes out of the house, camo on, gun in hand. We're good to go!

He jumps in the truck, we drive around the block and get out of the truck. Wondering whether or not to take the video camera, George solves that by saying "Leave the damn camera in the truck, we got birds to kill!" So I left it. (Remember what happened when we left it because of the "impending" rainstorm earlier in the year?)

We hustle down the edge of the field, being careful not to break any sticks, and ease up to a large oak that will hide both of us well, just inside the woods along the edge of the field. This is the same tree I filmed George's hunt from, and it puts us smack in between where the single gobbler roosted (behind us) and where the pair of gobblers roosted (directly in front of us). We slip on our facemasks and gloves and get comfortable while waiting for daylight.

It's getting light enough that the birds are usually gobbling by now, but we haven't heard a peep. Then, in the distance I hear it. The train. These birds LOVE to gobble at the train as it blows it's horn at the road crossings. "Come on dammit! Gobble! You love to gobble at the train!" I say. George chuckles and whispers "Yeah, you love the train! Gobble dammit!" The train blows it's whistle again...GOOOBBBBBLEE! Yeah! That's what we wanted to hear and from the roost in front of us too! From then on, the bird gobbled at just about everything as it steadily grew lighter out.

It's near flydown time and we're ready. Our guns are propped on our knees, we're sitting still, waiting to hear wing beats or catch movement inside the woods in the direction of the roost. Suddenly, a gobble rings out BEHIND US, out in the field! The single bird from last night is on the scene!

I tell George, "Get ready, somethings going to happen really quickly now! Once the shooting starts, don't stop until there are dead turkeys on ground!" Just then we can hear a bird pitch out of the tree in front of us and in a matter of seconds I can see a white head coming through the trees in our direction.

The bird behind us in the field gobbles again and the one I'm watching approaches the field edge, walking briskly. It's my turn to shoot as George shot the last bird, and I have 2 openings to shoot into. The tom I'm focusing on makes it to the field and enters the first opening. I ask George if he can see another bird coming as this one is wasting no time and I'm going to have to shoot sooner than later. He says he can't but to wait. I continue swinging on the bird as it passes through the first opening and goes behind a small stand of saplings.

As he begins to enter the next opening, I'm getting anxious and tell George I'm going to have to shoot quickly or I won't be able to. He tells me he can't see another bird coming and to go ahead and take the shot.

At 25 yards, this shot should be cake, but the birds walking quickly and it's kind of hunched up. I try putting to bring his head up but, there's no stopping him. I hold just in front of his wattles and pull the trigger. The Benelli SBE barks and the bird goes straight....UP! He's flapping his wings and George's Winchester sends a load of number 5's just before I shoot again! Feathers fly off the bird and George and I both him hit again, finally piling him up!

As I run out to grab the still flapping bird, George yells "You MISSED?! How did you miss?!" "No way I missed!" I yell back, as he comes walking over to me. We both have a good laugh over the excitement of the hunt and the way it went down and look the bird over.

The biggest spurs I've ever seen adorn the gobblers legs. Closer inspection reveals my first shot was right where I aimed, on the wattles, but a little far forward. From the blood pumping from the area, it would've been a fatal hit, it just wasn't fatal immediately.

We gather up the bird, our pile of spent shells, and take some pictures, then head for the truck. After getting home, I hang the bird up and put the tape to him. He's got a 9" beard, 1 1/8" spurs, and weighed in just over 17 lbs.

The first time I've killed 2 birds in the spring and they're both long beards! I'm a happy hunter!

That wraps up our spring hunt. George got out another time or two and came close, but wasn't able to seal the deal on his last gobbler. We're both already looking forward to next spring though!

Another King Falls!

Now that I have a bird tagged, it's George's turn to hunt, and I'm the cameraman, and if necessary, a backup caller.

George has had a roost near his house under surveillance and knows of several longbeards, jakes, and hens using it on a regular basis. These are extremely vocal birds, gobbling furiously in the morning and the evening at everything from turkey talk, to geese honking, to the horn from the periodically passing trains. I've never heard birds gobble so much!

The birds roost on a steep hillside, nearly a cliff, above a local trout stream on a friends property. They get hunted a lot, but George and I have confidence that we can still scratch a bird or 2 out of this roost.

The evening before our first hunt in the area, I go over to George's house and we sneak in to put the birds to bed. This is also done so I can get a feel of the land, where the birds typically are, and where the roost is located. Our setup the next morning proved unfruitful, though George did have an opportunity at a jake, and changed the way we hunted these birds for the rest of the season.

Our next time after these birds, we came in from the opposite direction, and I REALLY thought we were going to score. Right from the get go, we had several toms gobbling at everything we threw at them. We were set up in a field corner, within 100 yards of the roost, right where we'd had the opportunity at the jake a few days prior.

We had a lone gobbler cross the entire width of the field, ignoring our lone hen decoy (though gobbling constantly) and staying well out of range, when it was barely light out. Shortly after, a lone hen came out from where he had disappeared to and while George is watching him come out and cross the field chasing her, I am watching a jake (I think) slip in silently behind us and scope us out for a minute or 2 before skirting our position and heading to where we heard several other birds still gobbling.

I start calling along with George, and before long, I have the tom in the field with the hen all fired up and 2 more birds coming from the original gobbling location! We're smack in the middle of the ruckus with a hen decoy out and I figure once the pair of toms hit the field, it'll be a foot race to see who can get to us first! WRONG!

Two of the biggest birds I've ever seen appear on the edge of the field, gobbling like fools, and immediately start running...right to the lone tom with the hen!!! They completely ignored our hen!

After watching them run the lone tom and hen out of the field, I figured they wanted a fight. So, I broke out my gobble call and mixed that in with my cutting that they've been gobbling at the whole time. They keep right on gobbling, coming back into view WITH their former adversary, and the 3 of them walk right back across the field the way they'd come, again ignoring our lone hen!

I couldn't believe it, but they steadily moved off, their gobbles getting less frequent and further away. We packed it in and headed to work.

After another failed attempt at hunting these birds, we finally got it right!

Setting up again the field corner, we put out 2 hens and 1 jake decoy. Less than 100 yards from the roost, George gets the toms all hot and bothered with his clucking, purring, and yelping. Sitting about 10 yards from him, I get some good audio & video, with the video camera, of him calling and the toms hammering back as dawn breaks.

It's finally light enough and it sounds as if 2 of the 3 birds we can hear have finally flown down and I'm expecting to see them anytime. I zoom in with the camera to where I anticipate them coming into view and then see a bird fly down just to the right of where I'm focused! (I ended up catching some of it on camera though.)

Although I have the camera focused on the general area, I'm watching over the top with my eyes, trying to pick up on movement from the bird. Finally, I catch a glimpse of the tom and he goes into full strut as he approaches the field!

Zooming in, I focus my attention on the LCD screen on the camera instead of on the actual events unfolding in front of me, trying to capture the hunt as best I can.

The gobbler nears the field, a hen slowly following him as they approach the edge. They can clearly see the decoys now and while they excite the tom, causing him to spit and drum while never breaking out of strut, the hen is intimidated and doesn't want to enter the field. Instead, she hangs on the edge, critiquing the situation with a wary eye.

Of course, the gobbler does all of his strutting behind the only clump of saplings that's in my way of getting a clear view of him with the camera. From George's position to my right, there's nothing between him and the birds but 18 yards of open air.

When we decided to film hunts, I told George I wasn't going to let the camera keep either of us from taking a bird. We'd just get whatever footage we could, and that would be good enough for our first season trying this.

After a minute or so of parading back and forth, the gobbler moves back behind the largest sapling in my way, shielding all of him from my view except his fan. Suddenly, he breaks strut and I know the gig is up!

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

The camera jumps as the blast still scares me even though I was expecting it and I spin the camera on the tripod to focus on George. He asks if I got it and I tell him "Everything but the actual kill!" Though disappointing, the footage I DID get is pretty good.

George's bird was a solid 2 year old with an 8.5" beard, 3/4" spurs and just over 18 lbs.

2 down, 2 to go!

Kings of Spring

Spring. One of my favorite times of year. The snow melts off, the temperatures rise, the flowers bloom, and the turkeys begin to gobble!

I look forward to hunting spring turkeys as much as I look forward to hunting rutting whitetails. Heck, maybe more! One thing about hunting gobblers is, you can find them in fields quite often, and you can (typically) hear a response to your calls. That's usually not the case with whitetails, at least mature bucks!

The excitement with turkeys starts with the first gobble and continues, increasing, as the bird appears and approachs your set up. Sometimes they come in silently though, you just have to be ready 100% of the time!

This year I started turkey hunting with a relatively new friend of mine, George Kuhns. While I have plenty of friends that would like to shoot a bird, most aren't into it as much as I am. George is.

We made a pact this winter that we'd hunt together as much as possible and try to get a few kills on video if we could too. On top of that, we wanted to try and get his mom her first bird and I wanted to get one with my bow. He and I ALSO sent in for extra tags, allowing us to each take 2 bearded birds.

After seeing turkeys virtually everywhere we looked for them, April 26th FINALLY rolled around and our spring season was underway!

We started off opening morning with Mama Kuhns (George's mom) and him in my ground blind, and me directly behind them filming. We set up in a small field behind her house where she'd been seeing birds nearly every day for weeks. Of course, they avoided us (we never heard a peep or saw them at all) that day (and every other time we tried hunting them for that matter).

About 9 a.m., we decided to wrap it up there and George and I scooted over to another property to "run and gun", before the thunderstorm on the horizon got to us. As it looked like it was going to rain imminently, we left the video camera in the truck.

After covering a solid mile, while calling every 50 yards or so, depending on terrain, and breaking out every trick in the book from aggressive cutting, to soft clucks and purrs, coupled with leaf raking, we were about as frustrated as we could get. We knew this property held birds, fresh sign was everywhere, but we couldn't raise a single gobble!

I'd just told George that this was the first time in 4 years I hadn't had the opportunity to take a longbeard on opening day, when a bird gobbled out ahead of us! We both hit the dirt in the trail as we'd just crested a hill, and it sounded like the bird was in the field ahead of us, which the trail led directly to.

I slide out my aluminum pot and peg call, and cutt at the tom. He IMMEDIATELY answered! George crawls back behind us about 10 yards and sets up a hen decoy in the middle of the trail. We both ease over to a large tree about 10 yards off the trail that will conceal us and sit down.

As we settle in against the tree, I cutt to the gobbler and he again immediately answers and sounds closer. One more time I call and he hammers back. I wait a few seconds and he gobbles again on his own, DEFINITELY closer! He's coming!

After a minute or so, George tells me to call one more time. As soon as I cutt, the tom answers; he's not far out of sight, coming up the trail!

Sitting side by side, with both guns pointed in the direction of the approaching gobbler, George quietly whispers "I see him. He's right behind that blowdown on the trail edge." I pick up on the bird's red head through the brush as he scopes out our decoy.

He's within range but instead of going straight ahead to the "hen", he decides to cut into the hemlock grove we're sitting in, to skirt around us. It's too thick to chance letting him go too far, so I tell George "When he goes behind that big tree, I'm going to move my gun, and when he comes out, I'm going to shoot him." Out of the corner of my eye I see George's left hand slide to the ground.

Slowly stepping along, scrutinizing everything, the tom disappears behind the tree and I make my move. I slide the gun over, bury my cheek on the stock and prepare to shoot. Just as the gobbler steps into a clear shooting lane, George scratches the leaves and the tom stops and stretches his neck and head up to get a better look at where the sound came from. I settle the bead on his neck and press the trigger and the first "King of the Spring" crumples into the leaves!
After the handshakes, we get out the camera and snap some pictures to remember the hunt by. It's getting warm out, and that thunderstorm that was "imminent" never materialized, as the sun came out. It was a long, hot walk but, with a big turkey on my back, it was worth every step!

Sporting a 10.5" beard, 7/8" spurs, and weighing 20 lbs, 3 oz, our first bird had us off to a good start of the spring!

Starting over

Well, I'm going to try this again. I started this blog back in 2006, remarkably, 2 years ago today!

I lost interest for some reason, but have gained interest in trying it again as of late. So, I started by deleting the couple posts I'd made in the past and I'm going to start fresh!

I'm probably not going to post to this on a daily, or even weekly basis, just as I have time to recount my hunts, trips, whatever. We'll see how it goes.

Hunting season, for the most part, is wrapped up now. All deer and waterfowl is out (my 2 primary obsessions) but, there is still some trapping to be done and if the cold weather ever sticks around, hopefully some ice fishing too!

It's been an eventful year, I went on 3 trips this year, the first to Olcott, NY for some spring time salmon fishing with Capt. Vince Pierleoni of the ThrillSeeker. Then, in September, to Ontario, Canada with my dad, brother, uncle, cousin, and a family friend after black bears. Finally, I made my first solo jaunt to NW Illinois to chase BIG whitetails with a good friend of mine (Scott Wolfe) at the end of October.

Each trip was successful in it's own way and I had a blast on all of them, even though I came home skunked on both the bear and whitetail hunt. Having fun is what it's all about anyways. I don't NEED to kill something to have fun!

Currently, we're working on planning our first archery elk trip to Colorado. My brother Brett and I have put in some time doing quality research to make this trip happen. We have it narrowed down to a couple different units where we can get over-the-counter (OTC) either-sex archery tags. We just need to talk to some area biologists and game wardens to get the low-down on specific areas and then make the final decision on where to go. After that, we have to figure out accomodations. We're hoping to camp in the mountains and would really like to get someone to pack us in. That will take away some of the necessary legwork and hopefully make the hunt more successful by getting us away from the roads and other hunters.

Tonight, we (my dad, buddies Chris & Steve, and myself) head for Brett's apartment outside of Philadelphia for the weekend. We're hitting the Eastern Outdoors Show, then Bass Pro Shops, and Cabela's tomorrow! Woo hoo! It should be a fun day!

I'll catch ya when I get back!

Adam