PASO ROBLES – The spring turkey season opened earlier this month under mostly wet conditions, especially along the Central Coast, across to the slopes of the western High Sierras and all over Northern California. Despite wet conditions afield, turkey hunters enjoyed good success and the over all adult population of gobblers remains in strong huntable numbers.
This WON senior hunting writer, was invited up to hunt a turkey opening week by master guide and outfitter Clayton Grant of Bitterwater Outfitters, hunt@bitterwateroutfitters.com, based out of Shandon. Grant has exclusive hunting leases on over 400,000 acres of prime ranch land along the Central Coast. I was hoping that if the hunt was successful in harvesting a gobbler, time would allow for an evening wild boar hunt.
Clayton suggested that I spend the night in Atascadero and meet him near the rural town of Santa Margarita at 5:00 AM. I opted to spend the night at Vino Inn, atascaderovinoinn.com, which would only be a 15-minute drive to the meeting place.
Bitterwater Outfitters senior guide Mike Renteria, was the first to meet up with me to do paperwork for the hunt. Grant pulled up a few minutes later and we all piled into his RAM 4X4 for the short drive to the ranch. It had rained a little that night and conditions afield were not ideal as the foot-high grass was wet. A shot gobbler can make a mess of its beautiful feathers, as it flops around on wet grass.
The guides set up a great dry blind that offered comfortable seating and windows that would allow taking a good shot at a turkey showing up most anywhere around the blind. Clayton put out a mix of five full body decoys.
With a pre-dawn temperature of 39 degrees, it would take a while before the first gobbles from nearby roosts were echoed across the hills. After sitting for almost 30 minutes, Grant, a veteran turkey guide, got on his slate call and just scratched out a couple of very soft and subtle hen calls and waited. At fly-down time, the birds were not too vocal and seemed to be moving off away from our blind location, perhaps due to activity from a small herd of beef cattle that decided to walk through the same field where the decoys were placed.
As we patiently waited for a flock of turkeys to respond to calling, pre-daylight arrived with the hooting of an owl out of a nearby sugar pine, calling from a flyover flock of Canada geese, the calls of valley quail, a pair of mourning doves that landed in the overhead oak tree, a lone crow winging across a clear blue sky and finally a couple of faint gobbles from a turkey roost in a nearby digger pine. Unfortunately, turkeys being turkeys, they decided to take a different track after fly down and ended up walking over a distant oak studded hill. Waiting the birds out for another 1 ½ hours, it was time pull up the blind and move to option B. Thankfully, the guides knew the ranch well and had pretty much patterned the movement of turkey across the property.
The plan was to locate a small flock of birds and position ourselves for an ambush spot or to be in a place that would allow for a “spot and stalk” approach, to put this shooter in position to harvest a mature gobbler.
The first flock of 2 toms and 2 hens, were walking in a shallow ditch, surprisingly the hens following the big tom, but before we could get in a tactical position the birds walked over a nearby ridge and disappeared. We then spotted two hens, all by themselves, and finally a lone gobbler that was hopefully looking for a breeding hen as it walked slowly up a hill side.
It was not a difficult shot to take, as the tom was only some 40 yards away, as it topped a ridge. I doubt that gobbler even knew we were around. The Federal Tungsten 3-inch load of #5 shot tumbled the bird and it only slid for few feet before ending up at the base of ancient blue oak tree.
It was a hefty tom, weighing more than 22-pounds, sported a full 9-inch beard and decent spurs. This Rio Grande gobbler would be number 3 on my “bucket list” to harvest a second North American Grand Slam of turkeys. Fortunately, by the time of this successful harvest, the sun had pretty much dried out the grass, which made not ideal, but pretty decent conditions for photos.
Grant then talked about the heading to another ranch later in the afternoon to go for a hog, which would make for a very good combo hunt. We planned on meeting at 5 PM to sight in my Weatherby Mark V 7mmMag and then head out for a pig. Black clouds were blowing in from the north, as a storm front approached the Paso Robles. Grant was hopeful the front would pass through quickly, but Mother Nature had a different plan. While waiting at the gate to the hunting ranch, rain came down hard, which would make access to pig hunting spots, by way of very muddy roads impossible. The afternoon wild hog hunt had to be canceled, but Grant did offer up and invitation to return to Paso Robles for a future boar hunt.
There are still a couple more weeks open during the spring turkey season which ends on May 4, ( youth hunts May 5-18), and Bitterwater Outfitters would be a good guide to book a late season turkey hunt with, or better yet WON hunters might think seriously about a combo hunt.
In addition to turkey hunting, Bitterwater Outfitters offers guided hunts on private ranch land for Blacktail trophy deer, Tule elk, exotics, buffalo, Aoudad, varmints, and upland game birds. Hunters can also consider booking overnight stays at a cabin at ranch headquarters.
WON PHOTO BY JIM NIEMIEC
