What a great weekend for some hot turkey action. It was special as it was my son Zach’s birthday. We got up at 4am to get ready for the morning hunt. I knew we had to get out early as there was a full moon with no cloud cover so getting in before light was going to be important.
We left the back door of my parent’s house at 4:35am and headed down the dirt road to go hunting. In the dark walking was fairly easy with the moon, so I decided to check a few spots as I wasn’t sure which location to set up in. We have 3 tents out on the farm where we have had action or seen Turkeys roost over the last 4 weeks.
At 4:45 am we stopped at the 1st spot and I let out an owl hoot. Nothing. We waited a few more minutes and I was going to let out another hoot, but before I could he heard our 1st gobbles of the morning. They were way off in the distance on a neighboring property and to be honest I was a little disappointed and thought it was going to be a tough hunt.
By now it was getting a little more light than I would have liked so I decided to go to our 2nd spot which I thought was going to be the best location to set up due to the 3 or 4 gobbles we heard I knew sometimes the turkeys we heard on the neighboring property fly down and eventually come over to our property later in the morning. We got to the tent and got the decoys set up. I decided to use 2 hens with a Jake set up. The reason I like to use this set up later in the season is that I have found over the years using a full strut it tends to scare the less dominant gobblers and they will not commit to coming in. I have also found that using a decoy that has motion and realism really helps to seal the deal.
We settled in for what I thought was going to be a long waiting game. Now it was a little after 5am, and I decided to give a short sequence of purrs and yelps. All of a sudden we heard a gobble behind us in the woods at approximately 75 yards. We had at least 1 gobbler close to us. I was relieved that we now had a chance to get some action earlier in the morning. I waited another 15 minutes and did another short sequence of calls. Again the gobbler let off and I knew this time he was on the ground. I told Zach that we had a gobbler that I think was interested and hopefully he would show himself. Again I waited another 15 minutes or so and it was a little after 5:30am.This time I did some purrs and clucks and immediately a loud GOBBLE let off and he was close! I told Zach to get ready as he was going to come out.
I could not see him yet and thought that he might be just inside the edge of the field so I decided to get the string to the jake decoy and pull on it to give the decoy some action. This decoy will rotate and also put up and down the fan depending on how you work it which was the exact ticket we needed to get this gobbler out. As soon as I picked up the string and was working the decoy the turkey ran out into the field and started to puff up and get into a challenge position. He did not like that jake tending to a few ladies. I told Zach it was time to take him as he was already within range at 15 yards. I gave the string to Zach and tld him to keep holding the decoy in the half strut position. I got my gun and stuck it out the window and let off a BOOM! We had our Turkey! I looked at my phone and it was only 5:38AM. I could not believe it. Everything came together. I was a beautiful exciting morning to share with my son on his birthday. I told him next year it will be you being the gun man.
