By James Carter
I started applying for an Arizona Gould’s Turkey tag in the spring of 2010, knowing it might take me several years to draw one of the coveted non-resident tags. I had no idea it would actually take me nine long years to get drawn. I had already taken the wild turkey grand slam, having taken several Rio Grande gobblers in my home state of Texas, a couple of Merriam gobblers in New Mexico and Colorado, an Osceola gobbler in southern Florida, and a couple of Eastern gobblers in Maryland and Alabama. In the fall of 2018, I began contemplating retirement from my job in law enforcement, having worked in this field for more than 40 years in the San Antonio area.
I checked the Arizona Game & Fish website in the fall of 2018 and discovered I had finally drawn a Gould’s tag for spring 2019. To say I was shocked and surprised would have been an understatement. The first person I called with the great news was my wonderful wife, Sandy, who is so very understanding about my obsession for hunting wild turkeys. I now had something to look forward to after my retirement.
After discovering I had drawn the Gould’s tag for spring 2019, I called Pat Feldt of Arizona Guided Hunts with the good news. I had previously contacted Pat, and over the many years that I had been applying, he had assisted me in the application process. Pat provided me with the hunt area numbers and kept me advised of just when the fall/spring application and draw dates came up. Pat was always available to answer my phone calls and questions about his Gould’s hunting packages, so that is why I made the decision several years ago to book my hunt with Pat should I ever be drawn for the hunt. Pat informed me we would be hunting in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, in the same mountain range that had once been the range of the great Chiricahua Apache Indian tribes led by Victorio, Geronimo and Cochise.
I met up with Pat on a Thursday afternoon, just outside the Coronado National Forest and followed him to our camp site, which would be home for the next three days. Pat had his trailer already prepared at the site. The trailer was very comfortable and had hot and cold running water, a small kitchen and two separate sleeping areas. I was impressed and enjoyed the comfortable setup.
Day one of our hunt started before daybreak. Pat already had a known roosting area located. We slipped in about 100 yards from the roost and got set up quietly, placing out a hen and strutting jake decoy. As daylight started, Pat began softly calling to the birds.
Pat’s calls were immediately answered by loud gobbling and hen yelps. It seemed the area was full of birds. Pat kept calling, then roosted birds started dropping out of the trees and heading to our decoy setup. One of the hens walked right up to the hen decoy, beak to beak, and started a conversation with it. The gobbler came strutting in as well, but much to my and Pat’s dismay, I couldn’t close the deal on that bird.
On day two, we went back to the same location as day one. We set up the hen and jake gobbler decoys and Pat started calling at daybreak. The gobbler once again gobbled at all of Pat’s calls, but did not come to the decoys. That bird must have gobbled more than 20 times, but just wouldn’t come to the decoys.
We left the area and started walking and calling, trying to locate any birds we thought would cooperate. We saw several birds, but they didn’t want to come to the calling, or were on the move when we saw them. Late in the afternoon, we came across a vehicle with a flat tire and a tired looking hiker trying to figure out how to change it. Pat and I gave the hiker a hand changing the tire.
Before we moved on, he told us he had been hiking in a big creek drainage between two mountains behind his vehicle and he had seen several turkeys on his earlier hike. We thanked him for the information and headed up the drainage to see if the birds were still in the area. We walked up the drainage, crossing the water at several locations and weaving our way through the trails and rocks. We rounded a bend in the trail and Pat immediately told me to get down, because next to the trail was a beautiful Gould’s hen and she couldn’t have been more than nine or 10 yards from us. She eventually wandered off, so we went back to looking for birds. We later located an area full of turkey tracks and wing drag marks from a strutting gobbler. We decided that would be where we would hunt the next morning.
On day three of my hunt, the last scheduled day of the hunt, we returned to the drainage where we had been at the end of the previous day. We discovered a fresh set of hen tracks that were followed by a fresh set of gobbler tracks. The birds had already departed the area, so we moved up the road about a mile and heard a gobbler sounding off in another creek drainage. We slipped around the gobbler uphill from him and put out a hen decoy.
He immediately answered when Pat called to him and it seemed we were in business. He gobbled several times and sounded like he was closing the distance to our setup. He eventually went silent and never showed himself. As we were departing the area, we rounded a bend in the trail and found a gobbler leisurely walking along and he didn’t seem to notice us.
I stepped up to a large tree to use for a good rest and shot the gobbler. He wasn’t the biggest gobbler we saw on the hunt, but he completed my U.S. Royal Wild Turkey Slam. I felt so lucky to have drawn this special tag and to have taken this unique and beautiful bird. I would like to thank the Lord for these beautiful birds so many of us truly enjoy hunting.
