2011 McManus Camp Turkey Hunts
Hunt Reports and Photos
Please note: Hunt reports are posted in reverse order with the first hunt of the season at the bottom of this page and the final hunt at the top of the page. To see the chronological order, scroll to the bottom and work your way to the top of the page.
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Hunt 2 April 20 - 23
It is difficult to imagine a spring turkey season at the McManus Camp without getting to see Dan Minalga from Jefferson, NY. He comes every year, and for the second time, he brought along his son, Hunter.
Hunter's name perfectly describes the young man. At only thirteen years old, he is already, thanks to dad, an accomplished slayer of turkeys. Here's proof: he took a pair of them this difficult season, one of our few hunters to collect a limit of birds. The first was a jake, but that second gobbler was among the best of the year with spurs of 1 5/8" x 1 3/8". That 9 1/4" beard on that 18 lb. body makes Hunter's Rio a trophy if there ever was one.
Dan, on the other hand, suffers from a condition that is not uncommon among those who practice this spring sport. We've seen it several times over our years of hosting spring turkey hunters. The malady, as yet unnamed by scientists, might be described as "nervous shooting".
Here are the symptoms: the diseased hunter, hopelessly addicted to spring turkey hunting, is most often an expert at the sport. His garage closet is full of turkey hunting gear. Each week his mail box is packed with turkey magazines and catalogs. His health during the spring is challenged by sleep depravation. He knows all the calling tricks - when to call, how loud to call, how much to call, when to be silent, etc. etc. He can get himself inside a gobbler's mind, being totally infatuated with all their habits and traits.
When the afflicted hunter finally gets a gobbler in range, in looking down that barrel, he becomes a literal basket-case of nerves. Wound-up tighter than the small string on a fiddle, his ability to shoot with any degree of accuracy abandons him completely. His heart is pounding like a jack-hammer, and a hollow hole has displaced his stomach. The lucky gobbler, finding himself in the presence of such a tormented hunter, has way-better than a fifty/fifty chance of surviving the encounter. Simply put, said hunter is much too shaky to keep his shotgun's bead on his quarry.
Dan Minalga, beyond any shadow of doubt, is infected with this ailment. Yep, he missed a big'un this year. And it wasn't the first time that fiasco has happened to him here in West Texas. But you know what, just as with all the other carriers of this sickness, he laughs it off and can't wait to get himself back in the woods, set-up and yelping to his heart's content. Always the eternal optimist, Dan remains quite confident the next gobbler won't be missed. More often than not, he is. Dan cheerfully admits that if the day ever comes when he is free from all the symptoms which plague his shooting, it will be time for him to quit the sport.
Beaver McManus, their host, is ever-alert as a cameraman. In addition to getting some great photos of Hunter and his turkeys, Beaver also posed Dan and Hunter with a feral hog. You'll see the photos below. Beaver's clever staging of the scene makes the little pig look much larger than his actual size.
One rule around any Adobe Lodge camp is this one: never miss an opportunity to exploit any hunter's skill in his trade back home. With Dan being a plumber, Beaver enticed good, ole Dan into helping plumb-in a shower stall in his barn's new bathroom. Way to go Beaver. And thanks, Dan, for keeping Beaver out of trouble with this major task.
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Hunt 1 April 7 - 10
The last time any Canadian spring turkey hunters visited the McManus Camp a few years ago, they hunted in SNOW, of all things. The Canadians on this trip found conditions at the other end of the spectrum.
The three Canadians were Ben Evans, plus Roy Glanville and son, Gary. All are from Ontario. The fourth hunter also descended "from the north country". Gary Johnson, coming as a single hunter, lives at Milan, Indiana. All four were on their first Texas hunt.
Gary Johnson gave himself a huge challenge. He hunted exclusively with an old-fashioned muzzle-loader. With our entire area suffering from a major drought and with the turkeys acting abnormally, to say the least, hunting even with a full-choke ten-gauge that can shoot eighty yards is no advantage. So Gary's smoke-pole didn't produce a bird for him, but he restricts all his hunting anymore to that primitive weapon, and enjoys the self-imposed trial.
Ben Evans put tags on two turkeys, one of the few hunters at any of our camps to achieve the feat in this tough 2011 season.
Gary Glanville took a 21 lb. gobbler, which is easily the heaviest tom taken at any of our camps. Gobbler weights have rarely been out of the teens, what with the hungry birds finding precious to eat over the past few months. There is no telling what Gary's Rio would have weighed in an ordinary year.
So the recap of the first turkey hunt at the McManus Camp shows that four hunters took three gobblers. One took two, one took one and two took zip. The weather wasn't a huge factor, but turkey behavior is proving to be the "conundrum, wrapped in a riddle, inside of a mystery", as someone once said. A cowboy philosopher would simply say: "They just ain't acting like turkeys."
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