Score on big tom's when conditions are tough!
Joe Bucher

BUFFALO COUNTY, WISCONSIN - APRIL 18TH

Cold, wet weather. Air temps in the low 40's. Strong winds.. Rain! Not a pretty picture for any turkey hunt, but quite often typical of early Wisconsin turkey seasons. This is exactly the conditions Joe Bucher and cameraman Brach Pulver were faced with on the Wisconsin spring opener. In fact, it was so bad the first day that Bucher didn't even hunt! However, as soon as the rain let up on the day two, the duo was out after 'em with gusto.

"The biggest problem we had outside of the weather", claims Bucher, "was the henned up nature of the birds. The cold wet weather had virtually negated any nesting activity by the hens. This kept them in small groups feeding all day long, with a gobbler or two always trailing behind. It's pretty tough to call toms in this situation since you're actually competing with at least one live hen all the time."

In fact, Bucher believes that hens in this situation tend to be jealous of both calls and decoys. His experience suggests that too much calling here often does more harm than good, forcing the hens to lead gobblers away from your set ups. "You can see it in the personality and behavior of these hens as you watch them feed in any nearby field. Start calling these birds, and 9 times out of 10 they will look your way with sudden alertness. Then, they start to drift away from the call. Quite often, they react exactly the same when they spot a decoy."

Yet, Bucher did not totally give up on this approach. He simply became mobile. Especially when he heard multiple gobblers hammerin' above him on a tall wooded ridge. "As I listened closely, it was obvious that these toms were getting all worked up over a yelping/cutting boss hen. I thought it might we worth trying to mimick her and possibly aggravate her into checking me out."

The strategy worked but took some time to unfold. Bucher and Pulver stayed below the birds on a series of field edges, setting up and calling, and then picking up and quickly moving parallel to the calling birds and resetting on several occasions. "Eventually these birds starting heading to the far northwest side of this ridge. Brach and I saw these same birds strutting in an isolated field below this ridge yesterday in the late afternoon, so we finally agreed to boogie over to that spot and set up on this field corner before the birds got there."

As it turned out, this was a near perfect plan. Soon after Bucher and Pulver got set up, the boss hen began her raspy yelp again. Again the three toms answered. Again, Bucher mimicked her calling. This cat/mouse game went on and on as the birds got closer and closer. Finally, the hen became so aggitated that she actually flushed over the field in a loud cackle to see who that rival hen was. She landed on the woods edge just on the otherside of Bucher's lone hen decoy. Of course, this played right into Bucher's plan. The three gobblers now without there girl friend came rambling out onto the field in a hurry, gobbling in unison. As soon as they saw Bucher's decoy, they also broke into full strut in unison!

As Bucher and Pulver watched in amazement, the three toms strutted back and forth, round and round trying to show off to the lonely hen decoy. Bucher patiently waited as Pulver recorded the whole sequence on video tape for an upcoming episode of Hunting With Joe Bucher. Finally one of the birds seperated from the pack and decided to walk over and check out the stationary uninterested hen. Just as he stuck his neck out to get a real close look, a load of Remington Hevi Shot #6 said Hi!

What a hunt!