NY youth hunt success (with video)

[alloutdoors]

A coworker and I teamed up to take the nephew of another coworker out for the youth hunt this past weekend. He only had Sunday to hunt because of other obligations, but I was fine with that because it gave me a chance to sleep in on Saturday for the first time since getting back from hunting in GA the previous week. I went out Friday morning to try and locate some birds at my normal hunting spots. It was pretty windy but I did hear a bird gobbling in one spot but he went the opposite way of what I wanted onto neighboring property. I drove over to the "honey-hole" and sure enough there were several birds strutting in the cornfield. From Friday to Saturday the temperature dropped 20° and it stayed cold through Sunday. We all met up at a little after 4am on Sunday and I could only hope that the birds would do something similar to what I saw on Friday.

It was 24° when we got to the hunting area. I was dressed in my usual deer hunting clothes to stay warm. The birds usually roost right along the edge of the cornfield where I had seen them, and we needed to sneak right in under their noses. I had been debating whether to bring the blind or try and find trees along the edge of the field to set up against in the total dark. With the bitter cold I opted for the blind, hoping it would trap some of our body heat and make things a bit more tolerable. At the far edge of the field I got the blind out and popped it open, I got inside and carried it like that all the way across the field to avoid making noise when we were close to the birds. I got the decoys set up just as the sky was starting to turn gray.

We heard four or five birds gobbling on the roost, just inside the edge of the woods. After half an hour or so we saw one bird pitch down. It worked along the edge of the woods but was moving away from us. Eventually it walked out into the field and began to strut, it was a lone jake. Some other birds were still gobbling in the woods, and the jake seemed to want to move away from them. Then things went quiet for about twenty minutes. I was starting to wonder if the birds had all moved up the hill to the neighbors when a single hen cut loose from inside the woods. I quickly answered her and then we went back and forth a few times. Eventually two hens stepped out, and right behind them was a nice longbeard. The hens worked their way across the corner of the field and then went back into the woods, but the gobbler wanted to hang around and strut out in the open. As the hens moved off he quickly turned his attention to the decoys and made his way in.

Because of the way birds tend to suddenly charge the DSD jake without much warning I was a little worried about having an inexperienced hunter shoot the bird as it approached so I told the him to hold off until I told him to shoot. We let the bird come in and work the decoy over a little bit. The gobbler jumped at the decoy to spur it and landed about 5 feet past it, when he turned back toward the decoy he gave us a good shot and I gave the kid the green light. Unfortunately, there was about a two second delay before he settled the sights and pulled the trigger, and in the last split second the gobbler started to turn his back to us. I didn't react quick enough to call off the shot and the bird took the brunt of it in the body. Thankfully though he was inside of twenty yards and he piled up within a few steps.

This was his first turkey, and it turned out to be a good one. 22lbs 14oz, 1 1/4" spurs, and an 8 3/4" beard that appeared to be broken off from snow/ice damage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0RFZR6t1Ow

[beagler]

Nice!

[gdublongwilly]

Way to go! 

[tomstopper]

Awesome. Congrats to your boy. Nice video as well......

[Longshot]

Beautiful bird. Congrats to the young man and kudos to both of you guys for taking the time to get him out there.

[jakebird]

Congrats on a great youth hunt! Love the other camera angle there at the decoy!

[Longshot]

Great work on the camera and editing as well!

[Tommy Strutsalot]

That is an awesome video.  Love the ground camera view.  That's awesome.

[captin_hook]

Awesome video

[surehuntsalot]

congrats on the bird and great video

[alloutdoors]

Thanks for the comments, glad you are all enjoying the video. This is the first year I've had the GoPro and this was the first successful hunt with it. I'm looking forward to hopefully using it on a few more birds this year.

[ILIKEHEVI-13]

That is an awesome video.  Love the ground camera view.  That's awesome.

Ditto!

[DirtNap647]

congrats nice video