Not much boat progess...but here's some turkey pics

[neil b]

Hey Guys,
Hopefully everyone is having a fun spring. I've been moving, turkey hunting, and trying to handle a new puppy (more of a black bear cub it seems), so needless to say there hasn't been much progress on the boat in the past three weeks or so. Right now I'm waiting on a pair of fuel tanks to be built (23 and 28 gallons), so hopefully those will be done by the end of the month.
While I don't have any interesting boat pictures to post, I thought I'd share some from my turkey season. Overall it was a great season, despite some bad weather (we had a tornado warning for a few hours), and a bunch of unattended hens. Even had a bobcat try to munch a hen, then knock over and latch onto a pair of decoys. It was quite the experience.
(The fog and rain made for tough picture conditions, so some may be a bit murky.)
- Neil B.

 

[Bob B]

Nice photos Neil,
Are you bow hunting out of a blind, and are you using a regular broad head. We have good numbers of birds here and I think getting one with a bow would be quite an accomplishment.

Our primary turkey stalker is the coyote. And we have plenty of them too. Bet that bobcat was mad when he figured out it was foam and not the real thing.

 

[DeWayne Knight]

Are the Jake and Hen decoys DSD's? Those jakes in the first photo look like they are about to commence an ass whuppin' on your jake decoy...congrats on a nice longbeard with the bow!!!

 

[neil b]

Yea the jake and the hens are DSD's. I was shooting a 125 grain Magnus Bullhead (you can see the longer shaft with a large helical fletched feather in my quiver). I can post a picture or two of the results if anyone is interested in shooting that type of head, but they are a little graphic. I have never shot a bird with a regular broadhead, but have heard quite a few guys lose birds that way. Their vitals are real small, high and far back, and they obviously don't throw much of a blood trail. I think alot of guys just hit birds through the breast meat and end up losing them. Tracking birds is only complicated by the fact that they can fly. All this makes it pretty tough.
I would suggest a Bullhead, but you do need to try shooting them into an open layer block style target to see how they fly. I'm going to do more experimenting with arrow shafts and fletching combinations to try to get it a bit more figured out. The Magnus heads have a lifetime warrantee on the head itself, and they include an extra set of blades if I remember correctly. But watch out, they will eat up a block target in mere seconds.
Maybe I will actually have some boat pics in the next couple of weeks!
-Neil

 

[Bob B]

Neil,
Thanks for the tips on the bullhead. I will see if my local shop has any and get a few. I wonder if the new Blazers I just got would stabilize one.

 

[neil b]

Bob,
While I don't know for sure, I do not think the Blazers would create enough drag to get the 125 gr. bullheads to fly. Before my dad and I tried the big helical fletched feathers, we fletched the bullhead shafts with 4" Quickspins to see if they would work. I shoot 3 1/8" Quickspins on my fieldpoint/broadhead arrows, and was hoping to make my turkey arrows as close to my others as possible. The 4" Quickspins just didn't have enough drag or spin to stablelize that big Bullhead. I saw a video tip from an archery shop out west that suggests indexing one of the Bullhead's blades down, instead of up, saying that it greatly helped with their accuracy. They said that if they didn't index the blade down, the heads would hit 3-6" left. Who knows why?
Every broadhead company loves to claim that their heads hit exactly the same as field points. It rarely works that way for me it seems. The bullheads are still great heads though. Very durable and kill birds very cleanly. Just experiment with them and practice shooting them (and watch your blades if you are shooting through a blind window). Let me know if you pick some heads up, and how they work for you.
-Neil