If you hunt spring gobblers long enough you will certainly face bad weather at some point.
Spring rains are the most common weather problem this time of year. I have spent many April dawns huddled under a cedar tree or hopefully in a blind.
Some of these mornings ended in success. Many others just ended with a towel.
On opening day of the 2018 Illinois turkey season the conditions were horrid. It was as bad a morning for turkey hunting as I have ever experienced.
It had rained for the previous 48-hours. There was 4 inches of sticky gumbo mud to wade through, and the icing on the cake were winds that gusted up to 40 miles per hour.
My Pastor Bob Cowman had agreed to accompany me that morning to be my videographer. Our 300-yard slippery, sludgy trudge across the freshly-planted field seemed more like 3 miles.
Bob made a comment as we placed the decoys that he felt as though he had been on a treadmill. I was sweating as I agreed.
We sat up in the corner of the same field that has been so good to me for the past two seasons. This corner has a blind made of bales of straw.
In November this spot belongs to my great friend Steven Lewis for deer hunting. I honestly cannot say how many deer he has taken from these bales in the last two years but it is at least a half-dozen.