A Rare Find on an Easter Morning Turkey Hunt!

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This morning was the last day of a 3 day quota hunt I had drawn for a management area hunt here in Central Florida.

The hunt started out really promising, I had found a good bit of strut sign and there were gobbler tracks on just about every road I tracked.

Unfortunately, the birds were not gobbling very good and I was not able to roost a single bird. Pretty unusual really.

I decided to scout another section of the management area Saturday afternoon in hopes of finding a more workable gobbler than the one I had been hunting. I was tracking the main grade when I started picking up some turkey tracks in the road. Really don’t know why I was tracking that road, most of its limerock and to hard to see sign on. Just as I came around a bend in the road I noticed a gobbler track on top of the days wheel sign. Naturally I stopped to investigate.

That’s when I found it! The mother load of strut sign! This bird must have been there for several hours to make that much sign. The road was just cut to pieces. He had it tore up. As I was tracking up to the bridge at the creek a hen flew up to roost but she was apparently by herself and I was not able to pull a gobble out of the bird that had left all the sign in the road.

No problem I thought, he’ll gobble in the morning.

Wrong!

Well, after I could not strike him I decided to slip into the creek bottom and find a place to set up and call.

I was just getting into the hammock when I heard something get up ahead of me. I stopped to listen and in a minute a deer started blowing. I eased ahead and just as I came around a clump of palmettos I spotted a deer fawn lying in a shallow depression ahead of me.

The fawn had literally just been born and had not even stood yet. The fawn still had the wax caps on its hooves and there was a little blood where his mama had gotten up. He was just about dry.

There are not many critters prettier than a deer fawn and I ended up abandoning the gobbler hunt to spend some time there and take some pictures.

Have a look at this thing, most people and few hunters will ever see this!

Everyday in the woods is an adventure.

Larry