Eric Davis
Sun Outdoor Columnist

While it may seem like an oxymoron, the title of the column this week is probably the summation of how I view hunting and fishing trips. You don’t need to harvest an animal for your hunt to be successful, or catch a limit of fish to remember the outing forever. Often, the best hunting stories I hear end up with the hunter missing their target.
This past weekend was the Youth Turkey Hunt Weekend where hunters age 12-15 with turkey hunting privileges can hunt turkeys with an adult and only the youth hunter can carry a firearm (with some exceptions such as fence crossings). For the second year, I was a mentor through the Chenango County Youth Hunt where I was partnered with another mentor and matched with a youth hunter to take hunting. While I am now 0-for-2 in terms of my youth hunter harvesting a turkey, both years I have had what I would call successful hunts.
Last year I got permission to hunt a field where I saw turkeys every morning on my way to work. Early Saturday morning my hunter, co-mentor, and myself were in a ground blind wearing heavy layers and trying to stay warm. As the sun came up, turkeys began gobbling in the woods next to the field. After an endless number of gobbles, we finally spotted the first turkey in the next field over. Then another bird, and then another. This continued for probably 30 minutes.
There were turkeys everywhere, except in our field. Finally, after one tom chased another tom off, the losing tom crossed the creek and came into our field. We all got excited as he closed the distance and was within 100 yards. However, that was when the excitement ended, the tom wouldn’t come any closer to our group of decoys than about 70 yards. As he walked away, another tom came into the field. He stayed 200 yards away but we kept our eyes on him. Not much later, we counted 7 toms in the field but none wanted to come check out our decoys. After over an hour of birds all over the field, they finally went back across the creek and that’s when we noticed blobs in the trees on the far field edge. Through binoculars, we could see over 2 dozen hens still in their roost trees.
It was after 8:30 before they flew down and took all the toms with them. I went back Saturday night and put the ground blind as close to the roost as I could without being seen on the way in or out. We hunted Sunday morning had almost the exact same hunt. Both days we heard hundreds of gobbles but couldn’t get a bird to close the distance.
On Saturday, I picked up my hunter at 4:15 and we headed to meet my co-mentor at a gas station near the property we were hunting. After parking our vehicles and getting our gear out, we headed out on a half-mile walk in. Once we got to where we wanted to setup, we put the ground blind up, set the decoys and piled into the blind.
As it slowly got light out, a couple of birds gobbled in the woodlot to our left. A few minutes later a bird gobbled in the woodlot to our right. We made some calls but they never really seemed to be responding directly to my calling. After a little while the birds on the left stopped gobbling but the bird on our right kept sounding off. He started to sound closer and closer as he gobbled sporadically. When it seemed like he should be coming out of the woods and into the field, we heard a hen start calling and when we looked out of the blind windows, we saw a hen roosted in a tree on the field edge. She flew down into the field and headed right into the woods where we had heard the latest gobble. He gobbled a few more times as he wandered away until we no longer heard anything. Just as we had started to get disheartened, this squealing noise started abruptly to our left. I peered out of the window and looked down the hedgerow we were setup in to catch some movement. It took a second to comprehend what I saw. A bobcat stepped out of the brush with a good-sized woodchuck in its mouth. This was the first bobcat I have ever seen, and it was about 7-8 paces away from the blind. As I fumbled to get my cell phone from my pocket, it heard the noise and dropped the woodchuck before walking back into the brush and disappearing. While the turkey hunting had been slightly disappointing, the bobcat easily made up for it for me and my youth hunter.
These types of stories come in all shapes and sizes. From stumbling upon a shed antler on the way to the stand, to seeing beautiful wood ducks while trout fishing on a secluded creek. They all revolve around one fact, it would never happen if you were at home!