Well it's fishing season finally here in MN with the mighty Mississippi river ice giving way to soft water. There are a couple tournaments this weekend on pools 4&5, Full Throttle will be holding there tournament on Saturday and Brian Brecka will be holding his Great River series on Sunday. I had planned on fishing the Full Throttle but it coincided with my turkey season and when you only get a shot at a tag every 3 years you go try to get a bird.

    It might be fishing season by my hunt has started and ended as I write this. Mary and I began house hunting in KY last weekend, leaving Thursday after work and back mid morning on Sunday. We rolled into Gilbertsville/Benton area around noon on Friday and met our Realtor Sandra from Park-View-Properties, we couldn't have gotten lucky with a Realtor as was great to work with. We started hunting for house around 1:30 and by 6 we had looked at 9 different properties with two really catching our attention. With the long drive and and busy day we got our room and a bite to eat,catfish of course, at the Willow Pond in Calvert City. 9am we met Sandra at the office to start our house search again with another 9 properties to look at. Yesterday we spent most of our time in the Marshall county area, today though we had picked houses from all over the area. Starting in Kuttawa down to Murry and back up threw Mayfield and back to the Benton area. Again 9 house and on two really got our attention. So we left with four house in mind really only 2 but you have to keep the options open. We planned to meet with Sandra again at the end of May when we will be back down for the Triton Gold Elite and Owners tournaments to spend another day possible looking or making an offer but that hunt continues.

    As for the hunt that has ended I was able to bag my MN turkey on the opening afternoon in Red Wing, MN. Hunting with the Pinke brothers Jim and Joe. I arrived at Jim's house around 6 Tuesday night just in time to run to the store and get a couple big steaks, potatoes and beverages we grilled out and came up with a game plan. Since Jim had to work opening day Joe and I would be heading into the woods to fool a gobbler into range. Arriving before light we did some calling try to locate a roosting tom in hopes of setting up on him when he decided to get down. That didn't go as planned as the only tom that answered us was on property we didn't have permission to hunt, so we set up in couple fields we planned to hunt anyway. As the sun started to rise the wildlife started to awake except the turkeys around me only seeing 3 hens by 8am. Watching a group of 15 hens with 3 tom I decided we should see if we can get permission to hunt the property unfortunately we never did get the okay. After driving around looking for some different areas we noticed no one hunting a chunck of public land. So we bailed out of the truck and headed for the woods were I stopped in a picked bean field while Joe kept going up the valley. After sitting for a couple hours with no action I got restless and decided to for a hike and try to get a tom to answer back to some calling. Walking from one end to the other of the property I was headed down a field road back to the truck when I got the answer I was looking for. Calling back to him a couple of times I could tell he was coming looking for love. I staked my decoy in the road and found a tree to lean against across from it and started calling back to him.  What seemed like forever to about 15 minutes for him to make his way off the field above and down the hill to the road puffing up and gobbling the whole way, what a show. He wasn't a giant but a good turkey for only my second one and second time hunting, with a 3/4" spurs, 9" beard and weighing 22lbs. So with that hunt done we will continue hunting even during fishing season for that just right house.