Ok, it's not over exactly as I'm writing this, there are still about 5 hours left. It's over for me though, I just spent the last 6 hours in the woods.
This will go down as the weirdest, most contrary turkey season I've ever hunted in. The first 3 weeks were oppressively hot, and incredibly windy. Average highs were in the low to mid 80's, winds were generally 15mph to 25mph and gusty, up to 40mph on most days. Southern and Western Oklahoma were in a severe to extreme drought, and it hadn't rained more than an inch since New Years.
During all my pre-season scouting, I was having serious trouble locating gobblers, and had only heard a few gobbles off of roost. Short of that, it was like the birds had disappeared. I even wrote a blog talking about going "ghost hunting."
As the season progressed, I finally closed the deal on an Oklahoma gobbler. After sitting for 3 1/2 hours I had 3 gobblers come into my decoy setup. Never made so much as a putt. I was actually about to stand up when I just barely caught them out of the corner of my eye. They went into full strut, but never yelped, clucked, or gobbled.
During the last week of April the woods came alive. After thinking that the turkeys had all migrated north, they started opening up and really gobbling hard. I had many close encounters, and the only thing that kept me from sealing the deal was the birds coming in from the weird directions and rookie mistakes on my behalf. I tried to get up and move on one and got busted. Another I should have shut up calling and didn't, and the gobbler was able to locate me and wouldn't come in close enough. The rest they came in at my back and I couldn't get a shot on them. Those 4 days they were gobbling was the most fun hunting I'd ever had. You could go anywhere and yelp, and they'd gobble back at you. Most of the time though, they were henned up and wouldn't budge, but it was just nice to hear something.
At the end of April we had some very severe weather move through the state. Western Oklahoma stayed dry, but most of Southern and Eastern Oklahoma had torrential rainfall, heavy winds, large hail, and isolated tornadoes. Then all the birds shut up again. During the last week of the season I've seen a lot of hens and heard almost nothing. My working theory is that a lot of eggs were lost during the bad weather and the hens went into a late breeding season, thereby shutting the toms up and keeping them busy.
All in all I learned more this year than I ever have. I had a blast hunting, and actually got to hunt nearly 4 days every week. I found a dozen excellent deer hunting spots, and got to know a good portion of the woods that I hadn't been in before. They say only 20% of turkey hunters are successful, and I know if you managed to take a bird this year you are in very elite company.
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