My friend Mark and I had tried to get together for a turkey trip last season but didn’t pull it off so this year we set one up in Oregon so I could go after my first Rio Grande and he could go after his first turkey ever. He got us booked into the Big K Guest Ranch outside of Elkton on the Umpqua River for one day of turkey hunting and one day of fishing. I decided to fly down to Eugene instead of doing the 7 hour drive down and back and it worked pretty well since the ranch had a shuttle and I knew I could pack light for a two day trip.
We arrived on Tuesday just before dinner time and after unpacking in our cabin went for a walk down by the river where we spotted tons of geese, a few turkey and some blacktail deer. In fact, we had a hen walk over the sidewalk to our cabin as we were leaving on the walk. We then went to sit on the deck and glass critters before a dinner of steak (Ribeye for me and NY Strip for Mark) and some wine. We hit the bed early, knowing we had to get up at 4 am to meet up with Larry at 5.
In the morning after a quick breakfast we met Larry, loaded up his truck and headed out for our first setup on a ranch near the Elk River. We were setup on a field that was a few hundred yards long and had turkeys gobbling in the trees at the end of it. I was on the downslope side of a small fence and Mark on the uphill and Larry was behind us in the trees. The gobbling was strong up to first light and then after the turkeys flew down Larry started some light calling. Almost immediately I had a fan peaking out about 200 yards down the field and it was moving towards me. There was a dip in the field so I ranged everything and knew it would disappear a bit and come up over the slope at about 50 yards. The Tom kept coming, fanned out almost the whole time. When he was in the dip I got my gun up on my knee to get ready. The fan then the bird appeared and was still moving in my direction straight at me. When the Tom got to about 30 yards I waited until he turned a bit so I wouldn’t blow the whole fan apart and shot. Evidently I missed over at about 25 yards but the bird only went about 5 yards so I fired again and dropped it on the spot. I should mention, my red dot had loosened on the flight and I didn’t catch it until I sat down so all I could do is tighten and pray. It is off but not too off evidently. After the bird flopped a few times and stopped a cow got interested and came over to it. I finally got up to retrieve the bird before the cow decided to tromp it, my first Rio and a nice 2 year old Tom.
We moved further into the field and got set up again. I stayed with Larry to avoid another person out in the open and quickly saw a group of birds over on the upper end of the field by a brush pile. There were two nice Toms and about 5-6 hens. They were moving slowly up the fence line and the hope was they would turn the corner right to Mark. We watched these birds a long time and couldn’t get the Toms to head more towards us since they already had plenty of girlfriends. Unfortunately at the corner the Toms crossed the fence into a thick draw and just camped out there, occasionally gobbling but not moving at all. The hens kept milling about but the Toms wouldn’t even come out to follow them so we finally called it and headed to a new spot.
At the second spot we planned to set up in a tree line between two fields but on heading there I spotted a group of turkeys down field from us so we slowly backed up and set up by the gate. This time I stayed with Mark to spot and range for him while Larry was about 15 yards in back of us. We had one Tom come up through the brushy field to the right and busted us putt’ing off quickly. A while later another Tom that gobbled in back of us evidently got about 15 yards in back of us before putt’ing off, probably when I turned my head to look behind us but later found I would have had to have turned my whole body to see the bird.
Finally we saw a fan at the edge of our line of sight. Then two fans. Then none. We waited. And waited. After a long wait we started calling again and a Tom appeared and was walking our way. I called some since Larry couldn’t see the bird yet. The Tom was 200, then 100, then 90, 80, 70. Two more Toms came out by the truck and joined him. All they had to do was move about 30 yards down the fence line and they would be in range. 65, 60, 59 and they turned and crossed the fence. They got into an orchard area and just would not come out at all so finally Mark tried sneaking up on them which didn’t work and set them flying in every direction.
At lunch I cleaned my bird and got it in the freezer and then we headed out to the river to try some spots there. Amazingly cleaning the bird it had been hit in the head, there were no body wounds at all so my dot must not have been too off. We had a bit of an adventure as the off-road trail across a drainage ditch collapsed under the weight of the truck sinking us into a hole that even 4W Lo would not get us out of (I wonder if my crawl control would have done it). After a few phone calls a tractor was on its way and so were we. We set up downriver from the one boat launch and were expecting a bird to come from upriver so got Mark on that side and me on the other. Of course immediately I see a bird from the downriver side coming towards us. While the bird was out we switched seats and the bird kept coming. The bird reappeared at 15 yards and stared right at us. I didn’t think it would stay, Larry was whispering “shoot” and so was I and Mark tried to take the awkward shot just as the bird turned to run but missed. The big mistake was not changing the angle of the seat when we switched positions, it was going to be an awkward right handed shot the way we were sitting, if we’d have rotated the seat then it would have been a much easier shot. We called it a day on that.
It would have been great had Mark got his bird but I had a very fun day watching turkeys, calling some, and ranging them since my hunt ended pretty quickly. That night we had a good conversation with the other guests who had been skunked fishing that day and then a dinner of ribs and freshly gathered morel mushrooms with a wild mushroom risotto to boot.
We got to sleep in on Thursday since we met up with Phil at 7 am after breakfast. We headed down to Phil’s boat about where we got sunk in the hole the day before, launched, and motored only a few hundred yards before setting up on a current seam. He explained that in general it is best to sit a good spot and wait for fish so wait we did with four plugs out working about 35 yards in back of the boat. We watched the fog lift and the sun come out. We watched eagles, a beaver, geese and turkey vultures. We felt the sun get hot and started removing layers. We had lunch. Finally after lunch a rod went down and line was going out. Mark was up and into a good fish that ran hard peeling off line as it went downstream. We had to cut anchor and head down after it, finally netting a chrome bright 17 lbs. Spring Chinook. No more skunk and Mark got a great fish. The amazing thing was that the fish was barely hooked when we got it to the boat, it was surprising that it didn’t manage to come off during a jump.
We got back to anchor and set up again as the waiting game resumed. We saw a beat up looking steelhead going downriver and expected the eagle to pounce on it. As I was messing around with OnX trying to mark the position of my turkey the rod went down and I dropped my phone and grabbed it. The fish was obviously not another big king since I was able to keep it moving up towards the boat. When it got in the net we found we had an early wild summer run steelhead so after a quick photo released him back to continue his journey to the North Umpqua.
That was it for the fishing but hey, we caught a few fish and had a good day on the water. I’ve decided plug fishing is not my thing, too much sitting in one spot and hoping fish come. I like the spey approach of covering a lot of water carefully and even there these are the fish of 1000 casts and when plugging you at least aren’t worn out from making those casts.
All in all a great trip. Good company, good food and I came home with a full cooler finally. The only downside is that I lost my knife somewhere between cleaning the turkey and packing my bags, hopefully it turns up. After two trips now flying to hunt I think I have the drill down with TSA and dealing with coolers and game. The Yeti Hopper Flip 12 was perfect for a turkey and some fish, would not be enough for two turkeys. I need to get my red dot sorted again in the next few weeks since I’ll be back off to eastern WA for a two day turkey hunt at the beginning of May. Until then, trout have been biting so I’ll continue to fill up my freezer with them.