Montana Turkey Trip IGT: Pics and Reports....Tagged Out!

Happy Mother's Day, you meat eaters.

This will be long and boring with lots of pictures. Not for everyone. Hope to be able to report some turkey action if not, just some beautiful scenery.

My nephew is a student at the University of Montana (It's in Missoula). So my 82yo father and I decided to meet him the week after his exams wrapped up to do some turkey hunting. I have a friend who owns a ranch in northwestern Montana. It's a nice place with plenty of turkeys, but we wanted to see some different country, and travel around a bit.

So we will be hunting all over and not just on the ranch in NW Montana.

Friday is our travel day. My dad flies out of Miami. I leave from Jackson MS. We get to Missoula in time to do some scouting on some public land near Missoula. We actually spot a gobbler, two jakes, and a couple of hens on some private land only about 200 yards from the National Forest. And it looks like they may be going to roost on the National Forest. So we head back to town and call that a success.

The Old Man tells the nephew he's buying dinner for the roommates and their girlfriends. So we all meet up and the college kids take advantage of the free food. Dad flirts with the girls like he was 20.

The next morning we head out to the place where we saw the turkeys. No other hunters in the area. But it's snowing sideways at daylight. No gobbles.

We head back to Missoula. We have 3 days before we have to meet my buddy at his ranch. So we decide to drive all the way out to Southeast Montana to explore some. The nephew's tires on his truck are awful. So the Old Man buys him a new set for the trip.

We drive 7 hours out to Ashland MT. Pull in and check into the little motel. Decide we can use a beer. So we head over to the little saloon, and pull up just as it catches on fire. It later burns to the ground.

We grab a burger from the diner instead and head out into the Custer National Forest. We see quite a few hunters riding around scouting. And some hunters at camp sites. Which is encouraging and discouraging at the same time. It's beautiful and looks like there should be turkeys around ever corner. But we know it won't be that easy.

Note: I have been hunting Merriam's turkes for 20 years. And the best thing about them (other than the scenery) is the fact that they gobble on the roost in the afternoon. I don't know why they do this. But they do. I would say 70-80% of the Merriam's turkeys gobble every afternoon. Which really makes scouting for them productive if you're willing to do it late.

Problem is that this part of the state is very sparsely populated. So it's an hour from the turkeys to the motel (YMMV of course). And they gobble from about 8:15 to about 9 pm at night. And then they are gobbling by 5 am the next morning. So we are getting to bed regularly at 11 pm. And the alarm clock goes off at 3:15.

The rule of thumb is that if you need 8 hours of sleep. Plan on getting 4 hours at night. And 4 during the middle of the day.

We split up for the evening roost. The old man checks out one area. I drop the nephew off in another area. And I "stick and move" in the truck stopping to hoot at several good looking spots. This is all new territory for us. Never hunted here before.

I pick everyone up at 9 pm. I hear nothing. My father hears nothing. But the nephew has a turkey roosted that gobbled probably 30 times!!! That's a good start, although from experience I was hoping for more. Relative to other Merriam's experience I have, this is more hunters and fewer turkeys than I have come to expect.

The next morning (this morning, Sunday morning, Mother's Day) we are back in there at 4:45 and hike in to the turkey. Unfortunately it's again snowing sideways. And the turkey he has roosted doesn't say a word. However, way off in the distance (about 1200 yards) we can hear a turkey hammering.

So we go to him. It's a long hike. But the old man is doing great for 82. We take our time, but he doesn't miss a step and doesn't really slow us down.

It ends us being what we think is two long beards and a group of jakes gobbling more or less in the same area.

We set up and they answer us every time. But they aren't coming (Merriam's gobble a lot. I mean a whole lot relative to Easterns or even Rio's).

We end up moving on these turkeys three times. And finally on the third setup they start coming.

In this picture there's a rocky outcropping between me and this gobbler. At one point he came right up to that rocky shelf in full strut. About 60 yards. Really pretty. If we had a decoy out he would have probably come all the way. But when he didn't see a hen he slowly lost interest and dropped strut and started easing back up the ridge. We called in 4 jakes as this was happening off to the left of this picture. But as of now we are not shooting jakes. And we are not using decoys. As the week goes on, we might relax those rules.


Back at the motel catching naps now. We are about to get something to eat and head back out for the evening scouting trip. Saloon is still smoking and the VFD is still on scene 24 hours later. Town of 600 people and this is the biggest fire in some time.

Will try to update daily.

Also, like I said, my father and I have been doing public land Merriam's for 20 years. So feel free to AMA.