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2010 Spring Turkey Hunting
McManus Camp Report and Photos
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Hunt 1 April 15 - 18
Just like the other two hunting camps in our Adobe Lodge group, the McManus Camp was (take your pick) 1. blessed with or 2. had to put up with - a big rain over the days of this hunt. But when comparing rain totals at the different camps, the McManus total was the clear winner with 3 inches. And just up Dry Creek on the Richey Ranch, five inches fell. That turned the name of the creek into a misnomer. No longer was it a "Dry Creek". You should have heard the hunter's accounts of trying to use their shotguns to paddle to safety when the draw came down.
In camp was our old buddy, Dan Minalga from Jefferson, NY, back here for the third year in a row. There is just something about Beaver McManus and his hunting camp that keeps Dan coming back every turkey season. This year, Dan was accompanied by Scott Wooley from Milford, NY. Scott, among other talents, is one heck of a manufacturer of turkey calls. And he used one to call up his first-ever Rio. Check out the photos of Scott's work below.
With the weather playing such a huge factor, the pair, always hunting together, collected only the one gobbler. But the good news was that they worked, without success, several others. The spitting, drumming and gobbling rascals always managed, somehow, to keep plenty of thick cover between themselves and the two assassins who were doing their best to take them out. Turkey hunting can often be that way -especially when the weather turns against you.
Dan, depending on how you look at things, didn't exactly get skunked. He found a turkey's egg. And thereby he can claim that indeed he did take a beautiful gobbler two years early. No doubt, the DNA of that egg would prove up a future 10 inch beard and inch-long spurs on a twenty-plus pound gobbler. The glass is half-full, not half-empty.
So - two hunters, one turkey, one egg, and one heck of a good time. Not to mention one heck of a good rain on the McManus Ranch.
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