Friday after work, my dad and I grabbed our gear and took off for an evening hunt. Seems like everytime I leave the camera at home good things happen. We found a lonely gobbler, gobbling on his own at 5:45 in the evening. Through my experience, anytime you find a bird gobbling in the afternoon, on his own. This is a very harvestable bird. The terrain played a big factor in this hunt. The situation was, we were on high ground, not yet to the edge of the hill side that dumps down to a creek bottom. And the bird was gobbling on the opposite side of the valley but we weren’t exactly sure how high up the other side he was. It was dead calm and his gobbles were echoeing through the valley. As you guys already know this time of year, you can see forever in the timber. With that in my head and factoring in what time of day it was, I wasn’t about to go barrelling down the hill and cross the creek to his side. Later in the year I would’ve probably tried it. So we chose to go half way down the hill and play it safe. Didn’t want to push it, as this bird was hot. The creek at the bottom didn’t concern me much as its very narrow, you can jump across it. Like I said before, it was calm and quiet in the woods, so every call I made was as soft as I could make it. It proved to be too much for this bird. I’m still kicking myself for leaving the camera at home. This bird strutted and gobbled the entire way in like it was a morning hunt. We watched him from over 200 yards out, all the way into 25 when my dad squeezed the trigger.
If you’ve never gone turkey hunting, you have to try it. And if you can share it with family, its priceless. At the ripe age of 61 my dad shot his best bird ever, 23lbs 1 1/8 spurs and to our surprise a 8 3/4 and 3 1/4 inch double beard. Congrats pops, on to Missouri this weekend for round 2.
April 20, 2009 at 2:06 pm
#210876
Great you could share it with him W4E 
Can’t wait for my first 
