Three States. Three Birds. One Season to Remember.

Most turkey hunters would be thrilled to tag one bird in a spring season. Trey Thorsen tagged three—across three separate trips, in three different states. Georgia. Washington. Wyoming.

But ask Trey what made this season special, and he won't lead with the harvests. He'll tell you about a sunrise in the Cascade foothills, a family on a dairy farm who had him in the woods fifteen minutes after he arrived, and a Wyoming gobbler that came in so close, Trey had to act in self-defense.

That's the kind of season it was.

Georgia: Good Land, Tough Birds

The first hunt of the season took Trey to northwest Georgia, where a landowner named Otto had him set up in classic hardwood bottoms—the kind of ground that looks exactly right on paper.

The problem? The birds weren't roosting on the property. A neighbor's feeder nearby had pulled them off, and finding them required a little detective work each morning.

"Well-laid plans, right?"

The hunt that stuck with Trey most wasn't the mornings chasing birds across property lines—it was the afternoon he glassed what he thought might be two or three hogs bunched together near a feeder next door. He pulled out his binoculars.

"That was a bear. It was huge."

He messaged Otto immediately—told him his neighbor might want to know there was a 300 to 400-pound hog working the feeder. It wasn't a turkey, but it was the kind of unexpected moment that makes a hunt memorable.

Georgia never produced a tag, but Trey counts it as a win. He had a bird fired up, worked it for thirty minutes, and was in the game. That's turkey hunting.

Washington: Always Listen to the Landowner

Trey had tried to crack Washington State twice before. Third trip, different result—and the difference had everything to do with the people at Derry Lane Farms.

Within fifteen minutes of arriving and unpacking, Lori, who runs the operation with her family, had Trey in a side-by-side and out on the land. Her son Garrett walked him through every corner of the property. Her dad was out plowing a field and stopped to talk.

"The whole family knew I was there and they were rooting for me."

That intel paid off. Garrett mentioned that birds regularly walked a specific hill in the late morning and funneled down toward an alfalfa patch. It wasn't prime turkey hunting hours—it was closer to ten or eleven in the morning. Trey almost wrote it off.

He didn't.

He found a spot in the shade, put out a decoy, leaned against a tree, and settled in. First, he spotted a bird with a red head picking his way down the hill. Then a second bird appeared—a longbeard that had clearly just lost a fight. Trey watched him collect himself, notice the hen decoy, and slowly commit.

"I could tell when he committed. You can just tell—okay, he's coming."

The longbeard closed the distance and materialized out of the grass twelve steps in front of Trey. Shot made. First bird of the year down.

He sat there afterward—cool morning, quiet farm, views stretching across the Cascade foothills—and just took it in.

"I just wanted to sit down and enjoy it."

Wyoming: 7,200 Acres and One Very Unexpected Encounter

Wyoming had been Trey's nemesis. Third or fourth trip depending on how you count. This time he was at Laurel Leaf Ranch with Stacy and Brian—72 hundred acres of open mountain country in the kind of Wyoming landscape that reminds a guy from Texas exactly how small he is.

Stacy isn't a hunter, but she knows every inch of that land and where every bird moves. She'd had LandTrust guests tagging birds by six in the morning all season.

Getting oriented took longer than expected. Cell signal dropped. A marked waypoint turned out to be wrong. By the time Trey got where he needed to be, the sun was already up.

He stepped out of the truck, made one call—and two birds answered immediately. Close. Too close.

He spotted one in the road, scrambled to set up, put his decoy down, found a little pine tree for cover. The birds came in gobbling and strutting.

Then they had somewhere else to be.

"They had an appointment at another place." They ran across the road and down the mountain, gobbling the whole way, completely unbothered.

Trey reset. Worked some hens. Called to a bird high on a ridge that wouldn't come down. By mid-morning, he was walking a road toward a game camera Stacy had mentioned, making occasional calls, not expecting much.

He heard a gobble—close, off to the side of the road, down in a little draw. Pulled out his phone to text his buddy's son back in Minnesota, who'd been following the play-by-play all morning. Before he could finish the message:

"Holy cow, I gotta go."

He pocketed the phone and looked up. The bird was already there, walking straight toward him. No time for a decoy. No time to set up. Just Trey, a tiny sapling for cover, and a gobbler that had no idea he was there.

"I had to shoot in self-defense. He was getting that close."

Bird down. Quick, clean, and completely unexpected—the way the best moments in hunting tend to be.

He had a second tag for Wyoming, but never filled it. No way to donate the bird to a landowner or friend, no kitchen to cook it in. For Trey, it wasn't worth shooting one just to shoot one.

"That would be killing. I'm old enough now where I'd rather save it for someone else."

Why He Keeps Coming Back

Trey has been hunting with LandTrust for nearly four years, going on five. He found it through Instagram. Stayed because of the results—and the people.

Every property was different. Every landowner brought something to the experience that no map or forum could have given him. Otto in Georgia. Lori and Garrett and the whole family at Derry Lane. Stacy and Brian at Laurel Leaf. Each one went out of their way to make the hunt better.

"They're good people. They want you to come and they want you to have a good time."

He's already planning next year. Florida for an Osceola. Back to Georgia. Maybe Nebraska. Somewhere in the mid-country. The list keeps growing—because once you tag a few birds across a few states, the map starts to look like a challenge you can actually finish.

"Try it once," Trey says. "You'll be hooked."

Derry Lane Farms and Laurel Leaf Ranch are both available to book on LandTrust. If you're planning a spring turkey season, both properties come highly recommended—by a guy who's been to a lot of them.

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