NEWS FROM THE MUSSELSHELL-- 2007 Spring Turkey Newsletter

Our 2007 spring turkey season came in with beautiful weather and great turkey numbers here in South Central Montana. Our clients at Musselshell Outfitters, LLC were able to take some great spring gobblers and many clients completed their grand slam with the taking of the true Merriam’s with Musselshell Outfitters, LLC. In many areas of the U.S. the Merriam’s turkey has crossed with other subspecies of wild turkeys which sometimes takes away from the beautiful white fan of a true Merriam’s. As with any animal, there are also rare “color phases” and albino’s at times. Just like the species of black bear, a “black bear” can actually be many colors, including brown, cinnamon, blond, or even white.

One of our 2007 clients was fortunate enough to take a white color phase of the true Merriam’s turkey. This specific hunt for the “white ghost gobbler” was one of the highlights of the season. When you are involved in hunting, guiding, and outfitting wild turkey hunts for over 25 years, for 6 weeks consecutive each year, you gain a lot of memories to look back on, so don’t get me wrong, I can’t remember a spring turkey hunt that I wish I had missed!!!!!!!

However, because of the nature of the hunt, and because of the rare color of the gobbler, the “white ghost gobbler” hunt is high on the memory list. This particular gobbler was totally snow white in color, other than his black beard. On this particular hunt, Tim Abell, an accomplished Hollywood actor, and Rob Keck, our National Wild Turkey Federation C.E.O., were in camp with high hopes of taking one gobbler each on camera for a new television show. This new hunting show is hosted by Tim Abell, and the name of the show will be “The Federal Experience.” During this show Tim Abell is a novice hunter, learning as he goes, which makes for a very interesting hunting show. Tim is very perceptive and very serious about being the best he can be on every hunt.

When Tim and Rob showed up in camp I was a little concerned about a few things. The main concern was the weather, as this is a major factor on every turkey hunt. Killing a gobbler is one thing, and killing a gobbler on camera, with quality footage, on a given day is an entirely different story. Another concern I had, as an outfitter and guide, was whether these clients would be willing to hunt hard all day long for 15 hours per day if it turned out to be tough hunt. It may be hot, it may be dusty, and we might have to be really patient if we don’t have good luck right away.

Well, after a 3 am breakfast the first morning, I took Tim and Rob to a ranch where I placed them in a blind on an open sage flat within 40 yards of the Musselshell River. The turkeys I had been watching had been roosting on the other side of the River. They had been flying down in the mornings, then gathering up hens, and finally flying across the river and walking past the blind I had set up. When I showed Tim and Rob this set-up the night before, Rob indicated that he normally does not hunt from a blind for turkey. I then showed him more of the area, and explained what the birds had been doing. After a good study of the area Rob could see what I had in mind. Even though there is NEVER a guarantee on a free-ranging, fair chase hunt, this was a good gamble. Since we were trying to get footage for a show, this area was unique in that you could see the birds sitting on the roost, then you could see the birds after they hit the ground in the mornings, flying across the river, then hopefully coming past the blind, henned up or not.

To make a long story shorter, we had a lot of luck, the weather was great, Tim, Rob, and the camera man did a great job, and Tim ended with a 25 pound gobbler by 7:30 am the first morning!!! 

After some picture taking, and some final camera work, it was time for Rob to try his luck on a Musselshell gobbler.

During some picture taking sessions on Tim’s beautiful white fanned gobbler, I casually mentioned to Rob that I had seen a totally all white gobbler a couple times earlier in the season. One client who was in camp earlier in the season had taken a nice gobbler that came in side by side with the white gobbler. The white gobbler had seen his buddy called in and killed right beside him. On two other occasions I saw clients shoot at the white gobbler but somehow clean miss him!!!! At this point, I had plans of taking this gobbler myself, as it seemed that some people mistakenly associated this white turkey to being “crossed with a tame turkey”, or made other mythical statements to explain the white color. To me, he was a trophy, very educated from past hunting, and very wary of other predators. When you are a snow-white turkey you are a potential meal for coyote and bobcat at all times. This white gobbler was at least 3 years old and hadn’t been eaten by a predator yet. If you put a white barnyard gobbler in this same country, he wouldn’t make it one day. The coyote and bobcat have to eat too, not to mention the huge golden eagles which I have seen kill and eat full grown turkeys.

When I mentioned this white turkey to Rob, I instantly saw that certain gleam in his eyes. The gleam in Rob’s eyes was that same look that an eight year old boy or girl has on their first turkey hunt. It was the same gleam I have seen when a hunter is about to fill a world slam. I already knew that Rob had been hunting turkeys for somewhere between 30 and 40 years in all 48 states and several countries. When I saw the gleam in his eyes I knew he was the man for the job. He didn’t need to say anything else. I already knew he would leave our camp without a turkey, if we couldn’t get the white gobbler within 30 yards for a good clean kill. I knew that if we couldn’t find the white gobbler Rob wouldn’t fill his tag, as he would hold out for the white gobbler until that last bird flew up on the last day of the hunt.

I then told Rob that “I haven’t seen the white gobbler for at least 12 days. I haven’t even been to the particular ranch where I saw the white turkey for 12 days.”

By this time it was about noon and we were heading for the ranch where I had seen the white gobbler. Tim’s gobbler was tagged and safe in the freezer while we changed our focus to finding the white gobbler. I knew from over 15 years of hunting and outfitting this area that our chances of finding this exact bird, were not good. This is big country where animals travel long distances. There are no feeders, and turkeys in this country do not drink water until later in the summer. They get adequate moisture from the tender new grass that is abundant everywhere at this time of year. There is nothing to concentrate or hold an animal in this part of the country. There would be no sitting- on- a- food- plot- type- hunting here as we would be HUNTING for the bird. I am not putting down good food plots or chufa patches as that is good management in some areas, but this is Montana, not the Midwest or the South. Turkeys here “are the same only different.”  They seek different kinds of feed than an eastern does, and they travel differently. This turkey would be only where we find him, and he probably wouldn’t stay in one place for long.

This wasn’t Rob’s first rodeo and he knew we needed to locate this turkey with a shock gobble or simply sight the bird, rather than just doing random blind set-ups. We were not hunting a 40 acre wood-lot behind the house. We were hunting big ranch country in central Montana, where locating the game each day is half the battle.

We pulled into the ranch, walked away from the pickup and Rob blew a loud crow call trying to get the bird to gobble so we could locate him. We tuned our ears into the rimrock canyon ahead. The weather was great, with full sun and no wind. We got no answers to the first crow call, but that’s no big surprise, as we might have to do this all day in different areas before getting close enough for a gobbler to hear us, and or finding a turkey willing to gobble at mid-day. If we do hear a gobble then what are the chances it’s going to be the white gobbler??

The second stop we get out of the pickup, Rob blows the crow call and we hear an instant gobble in the distance. We then get excited and move towards the gobble on foot. After moving about 400 yards towards the gobble Rob blows the crow call again, but no answer this time. We then start peeking over a blind ridge, but see no turkeys. We can’t move much, this is semi-open country and if we get spotted by a turkey, our game is over for today. I was really hoping this turkey would gobble again, before we get spotted. At this time I looked across the valley and on the opposite ridge I see the white gobbler at about 400 years walking through some small pine. We had now spotted the “white ghost gobbler” and he had not seen us first!!! I was shaking as I motioned to Rob and whispered, “I see the white turkey.” Rob, who was about 20 yards ahead, crawls back to me where he can see the “white ghost” for the first time. At this point in the hunt I felt like I was back in time, hunting with an old high school buddy, back when killing a turkey, and how to explain another mornings absence to the principal were the only things on our minds.

After studying the white gobbler and his three hens for quite some time, we realized that there was nothing we could do right now except stay hid and try to keep the white gobbler in our sight so we didn’t lose track of him. This is where a lot of turkey hunters that I have been with would have made the big mistake of trying to move on the turkey. It just wasn’t going to happen right now. This gobbler needed TIME. He needed time to move so that we could move on him without being seen. After watching this white gobbler for several hours at distances of 300 to 500 yards the white gobbler and his hens finally go out of sight behind a blind ridge of rimrock outcropping. By this time it is about 2 pm. Now we have to figure out how to get 30 yards of this beautiful wary white creature, plus, we need the camera man set up to film the bird coming to us. If we get spotted at any time in this semi-open country we all know it’s not going to happen.

We had watched this bird long enough through binoculars that I felt strongly that I had his “modus operandi” or his mode of operations figured out.  Our best option is to take a chance on getting spotted and move half a mile to a ridge where I believe this turkey may travel on the way back to roost. There is no way to tell where a turkey is going to roost in this big country. He will roost wherever he ends up. However, since I have hunted this country for many years I could put the cards in our favor.

At this point in the hunt I needed to run this plan past Rob and see what he thinks about it. I wasn’t sure if Rob would be in for this plan since we might have to sit for 5 or 6 hours in one spot, motionless, with no guarantee that this bird would walk 30 yards of us or even close to us. Since this gobbler had hens with him, calling might be the wrong thing to do, as all turkey hunters know this could make the hens take the gobbler straight away from us.  The big advantage to this plan was that we could get set up good, where the shot and the camera angle would be ideal. This takes time and you need to study the country and terrain very closely for everything to work out for the shooter and for the camera. We would only get one chance at most to make this all happen at once.

After some serious conversation and debate, Rob was ready to gamble!! We didn’t have a deck of cards, and we weren’t in a casino, but we were big time gamblers at this point. It would be all or none, and we were enjoying every minute of it.

We moved to the strategic ridge and very carefully got Rob and the camera man set up for the potential action ahead. With Rob’s many years of serious turkey hunting experience, we were set up with all details taken into consideration. We were set up in a high area looking down on where the white gobbler SHOULD appear in late afternoon when he decided to move back to his potential roost site. The area we were set up in looked like a big horseshoe shaped amphitheatre and I had a front row seat!!!!!!!!!

We barely got everything organized, shooting lanes and camera angles cleared, when the show began. The “white ghost gobbler” appeared about 400 yards out, at almost the same place where we were originally set up two hours earlier!!!!  The “ghost gobbler” was now with 9 hens, all normal colored, and the “ghost gobbler wasn’t prejudiced!!!!    He would disappear up different canyons, sometimes for half an hour, then reappear with different numbers of hens. At one point a mature normal colored gobbler appeared but stayed out of site of the “ghost gobbler”. This was the valley of the “white ghost gobbler” and all the hens in this valley were his.

We were now set up perfectly but needed the “ghost” to narrow the distance from 400 yards to 30 yards within the next 3 hours. All we could do was sit tight and hope we were on the right ridge. Within the next 3 hours the “ghost” worked his way towards us, but never really came directly at us. You could never really tell for sure whether he was going to come to us or not. Finally the “white ghost gobbler” was out of sight again but I could hear him drumming. Slowly, but surely he came closer and closer. He was fanned out the entire time drumming and strutting until at about 40 yards he disappears into a small depression in the land. The “white ghost gobbler” had seen the mature tom decoy that Rob had strategically placed as if he was standing on an old tree stump. The “white ghost” was focused on the mature tom decoy when he came up out of the depression at about 30 yards. Rob’s 20 gauge shotgun ended the hunt after almost 8 hours of watching the beautiful “ghost gobbler”.

We finally got to take a closer look at him, and first thing I checked was to see if his eyes were pink. He did not have pink eyes, as he is a color phase that just happened to be white. This gobbler’s offspring have no better chance of being born white than any other gobbler’s offspring. This “white ghost gobbler” hunt will be on national tv and Rob has plans of having the “ghost gobbler” mounted and put on display in the National Wild Turkey Museum in Edgefield SC.

I think it is great that this turkey will be on display for many to see, rather than just ending up as a pile of feathers blowing through the canyon one day. Wild turkeys in this area rarely live past the age of 5 or 6 years old. They will most likely die of old age or be eaten by predators before this age. The “white ghost gobbler” was 3 or 4 years old.

This will always be remembered as a great hunt, with great people and all this happened in ONE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Musselshell Outfitters, LLC want to thank Tim Abell, host of “The Federal Experience” and Rob Keck, CEO of our National Wild Turkey Federation, as well as all our past clients for a top season in spring 2007. Hunting the true wild turkey gobbler free-range, fair chase is always a great gamble.

The NWTF is a great organization that I have personally been involved with for almost 30 years. Musselshell Outfitters, LLC is a diamond life sponsor of the NWTF. Now that I have personally met Rob Keck, I will say that I am very thankful that we have him as our CEO. It would be very hard to find a new CEO that has such a true passion for the wild turkey, for conservation, and for hunting the wild turkey. Thanks to Rob Keck, all the regional directors, and to all the volunteers across the country who work for the National Wild Turkey Federation, as well as all involved with “The Wheelin’ Sportsman”, “Women in the Outdoors”, and the J.A.K.E.S. program.

Most of all, thanks to Jennifer Higgins, as most people are just joking when they say “we interrupt this marriage for the hunting season.”

 

Take Care and Good Hunting

Randy and Jennifer Higgins---Musselshell Outfitters, LLC