My First Turkey
I have never turkey hunted before and honestly didn’t know that much about the bird itself. I started by listening to podcasts and watching YouTube videos. There’s only so much you can learn before just getting out in the woods and experiencing it for yourself. Every morning I was in the woods was a learning experience and I can say that for any day and any season in or out. I started to learn the pattern of the birds that were close to the house and understanding why they do what they do to predict what they will do next. Every morning or evening I couldn’t hunt I was still roosting birds to find out where they were sleeping. When season finally started opening day was the best day I could’ve had. Only thing that would’ve made it better was if I got a bird that day. Nothing beats waking up with the world, seeing the sunrise, listening to the birds sing, seeing deer awaken in the morning, and hearing those first few gobbles while they come off the roost. Many mornings started like this, but it wasn’t long until that faded quickly. 10 gobbles turned to 6 and turned to 2 or 1 very quickly.
As the season went on, the morning gobbles became few and far between. Don’t get me wrong, each one was just as exciting. But the chance to find and get to one of the wild turkeys was harder and harder. It was the last weekend of the season and I had a friend who reached out and said he had an opportunity for me to kill a bird. While it wasn’t the challenge of a public wild bird, I said yes I have a tag to fill, I’ll be there.
It was one of the coldest mornings we’ve had in a long time since spring it started to warm up. But this morning was in the high 30’s low 40’s. I was shivering. We woke up around 3 am to drive the hour and 30 minutes to a friends property. We met him, drove to the field and walked in about 10 minutes to a post set up perfectly. This was my first sit with a wide open field and decoy in front of me and not up and actively chasing them. We sat and watched the sun rise and many, many bucks cross through the field. We began to hear gobbles and let me tell you, this bird gobbled 30 times while still in the tree. We watched 3 hens and a jake fly down and soon after I got to watch my bird fly off the roost. This was the first time I really got to see these birds fly down like this in an open field. Now where we were set up with our decoys, was too far and the grass was too high for them to see. They flew down at exactly 150 yards in front of us and Jake had to do a little sweet talking to get these birds to see the decoy.
One jake (thought it was a hen at the time) and one gobbler finally saw our decoys and was running over to it, they wasted no time. The gobbler strut around the hen decoy once and on the second lap around, 12 yards in front of me, I finally got my first bird. Nothing beats a morning like that. I got to see him fly down, get called in, check out my decoy, and harvested my first bird. I will forever be grateful for that day & excited to do it again and again. Waking up with those spring mornings & everything you learn chasing these birds is something that you can’t get anywhere else. I appreciate the “off” season, deer season, and everything else. But turkey season has a special place in my heart.
