One Wild Turkey Hunt!

 For any and all of you that read this and have hunted the wild Easter Turkeys in the North East as well as the Central parts of America, i think you can appreciate just how amazing this story is.  A little bit of background on me: I was born and raised in New York state near the Buffalo area, and my dad is a hunting enthusiast.  So its not hard to see that some of the things he loves rubbed off on me and i can tell you that turkey hunting is by far my most favorite sport outdoors.  I have hunted turkeys for many years although the past few i havent had much of a chance due to land restrictions and not much opportunity.  The story i am about to tell you is one that i will never forget!

My father, back in the early 1980's bought a new specialized turkey gun.  It was a gorgeous Ithica 10 guage magnum semi-auto three shot with a modified turkey choke.  This gun would grab a turkey at seventy yards and put it down!  It truly was and still is an awesome hunting gun.  We, through some hunt swaps in various hunting magazines were fortunate to become freinds with a couple gentlemen from Iowa, where turkeys are abundant and to say the least, huge!  The second year we went hunting there, there was a man in the local paper showing his gobbler, that weighed in at 31 pounds and had multiple beards with spurs that would make an eagle jealous.  That got our hearts a pumping and we could not wait to hit the sack that night to get up for the mornings hunt!

The following morning, we awoke well before dawn and had a quick breakfast, put on our camo and got in the trucks. I was to go with Dean, one of the gentlemen we met through the swap while my dad went with Kelly, the other guide for our hunt.  Excitement pounded in my chest as thoughts of gigantic bearded behemoths danced in my head.  I kept seeing the man on the front page of the newspaper with that ostritch people were calling a turkey!  I wanted to feel that same rush. 

After a short drive, Dean pulled into an old abandoned pig farm and announced that we had arrived.  The sun was still a long way from peaking its head over the horizon but i didnt even feel tired, i was so wired for the hunt!  I quickly grabbed my Remington 870 Wingmaster from the back of the truck out of its case, checked to be sure i still had my face mask and light gloves.  Everything was where it should be and Dean and I headed off towards a blind he had made sometime earlier.  I dont know about you, but those walks in the twilight hours before dawn in a wooded area sure can raise some scary thoughts in ones mind, but that day i felt none of it.  I had one thing on my mind and that was the monster Tom i knew was lurking around in these woods.

We found the blind as if Dean had a homing beacon on it, and i always wondered how he found the blind in the pitch black darkness that morning but have never thought to ask!  We settled in to wait for the dawn to arrive, and with it, hopefully a Tom full of gobble and gusto! 

We didnt have to wait long.  The sounds of the wilderness waking up in the early morning hours, was silenced by a mature Toms thunderous GOBBLE.  My heart immediately leapt into my throat and the pounding in my ears made me feel as if i had just run the mile in a minute flat!  For me that sound from a gobbler is such an adrenaline rush!  Dean made some soft calls with his diaphragm call and the Tom immediately answered! In the not too far distance we heard the sound of wings as the Tom flew down from his roost, and as he hit the ground he let out another peal of thunder!  By then, my palms were sweaty and my tongue was dry but i felt none of it.  My gaze was locked in the direction the Tom was coming from.  Dean told me to get ready, and i didnt hesitate as i lifted the gun to my shoulder and nestled my cheek on the stock, sighting down to the bead at the tip of the long barrel.   Heart pumping and breath coming in gulps i awaited the arrival of that Tom.  He let out another couple of thunder boomers, that seemed to shake the very ground i sat on!  Much closer now!  So close in fact that if not for the small hill directly in front of us, im sure we would have seen him much sooner, and we could actually hear his wingtips dragging through the scrub and debris on the forest floor. 

Dean called a bit more, even more softly and the gobbler couldnt take anymore, and as he let out his last roaring, thundering, defiant gobble, he crested the small hill in all his glory.  Ill never forget that Tom, as he came over the hill and my gun pointed straight at his head and neck, he seemed to deflate just a little bit, as if to say that in that last moment, he recognized the error he had made that morning.  I barely felt my gun go off as i squeezed the trigger, holding it steady where the neck joins the body.  It all seemed a blur for the next few seconds, as Dean scrambled from our cover, to quickly grab the Tom, and i scrambled out to join him.  The bird was the biggest i had ever harvested!  He weighed almost twenty six pounds and had an eleven inch beard that looked more like a broomstick than a beard, and spurs that were nearly two inches in length.  I had gotten my monster turkey!  From that day forward i was hooked on turkey hunting even more than i had been in the past!

Now on that day, my dad being a bit more choosy than i, passed up a couple of smaller toms a jake or two, but decided that tomorrow would be the day he got his bird too!  We only had the two days to fill our tags, and that was ok, because the area we were hunting in was chock full of turkeys!  The guide that was with my dad also filmed his hunts, and they got alot of great footage of toms coming in and strutting and even some of a jake trying to pull a fast one on a wary old gobbler. 

The next morning was nearly exactly like the first, only my dad Kelly and I got in the same vehicle and Dean went to work.  We headed out well before dawn and all through the morning didnt even hear so much as a peep from a wild turkey!  Cameraman, gun and son in tow, my dad never gave up.  We had a quick lunch back at Kelly's place and loaded up to hunt the midafternoon.  The wind had picked up something fierce and was howling around the hills and flatlands like it was demon possessed.  I dont know if you ever experienced this, but turkeys clam up when it gets really windy.  They dont trust what and where they hear things at that point and it makes it bit edgy! 

Our finaly set up was on a "hogs back" my dad liked to refer to areas such as this in that way, because it was a hill surrounded by lower land, sorta like a hogs back tends to swell up at the shoulders and taper off down the back.  There was some scrub and thick briars around as well as a dozen or so pine trees.  Kelly had been calling, camera ready for quite some time and we had still to this point heard absolutely nothing!  Kelly gave the signal to stand, and that meant we were likely to attempt another spot before the day ended.  We all gathered and stood talking about where we should go next when it happened.  The absolute loudest and most thrilling gobble i have ever heard!!!! A tom had snuck up on us and was no more than twenty yards away just down over the "hog's back"!  We immediately scattered. Kelly threw himself under a low hanging pine, and i did much the same, and my dad was forced to squat on his haunches, back against an old gnarled hardwood tree of some kind.  His ten guage held upright, the gobbler let us have another deafening gobble, and headed straight into the small clearing we had previously all been standing in.  The tom was in full strut and strumming.  If you have never heard a turkey strum, its the coolest sound next to the gobble itself.  It shimmers and shakes its feathers in away that sound an awful lot like a whispering strumming noise and that was the only time i had ever heard it.

My dad, being the veteran hunter that he is, held stock still and the bird never noticed him.  The tom strutted across the small clearing, between Kelly and I and straight to where my dad sat poised.  I KNOW his heart must have been pounding so hard, but he kept his cool!  The bird kept his gait, and came within a couple feet of my dad and turned, to look back the way he had come.  I saw my dad lower the shotgun, and the bird from two feet away felt or heard something and came down out of strut to see what was going on and thats when the big ten gauge went off!!!   The tom was, and i swear this on my sons lives, no more than a foot or two from the end of the barrel!  I have never seen anything like that before, or since.  The bird was so close that the fatal shot looked more like a slug wound than that of a pellet load from a shotgun.  I dont even think the shot had left the cup!! It was, and forever will be my most favorite turkey hunt.  Dad's bird was much the same as mine in size and stats, but he definitely won out on the how.  I hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as i enjoyed reliving it for you on this hub!! Take care and have a great time in the woods!  And remember try to show a young person some of the wonders of the woods whenever you can!