How did you get started?

[CASH]

Just wondering how you got started turkey hunting.

Can't remember exactly what got me interested in it, but in my mid 20's I decided I was going to give it a shot. I had a Mossy 500 with a 26" barrel, with the old military woodland pattern and the stock turkey choke. The forums weren't around then and I didn't know anyone that turkey hunted, so I bought a Lohmans Pump Yelper  , a vest from Wal Mart, and the cheapest 2 3/4 inch turkey shells I could find. Loaded up the Mossy and went out.

Took a co worker with me to the WMA. I remember I had absolutely no clue what I was doing, did know how to call, and obviously didn't know about pattering my shotgun. We went out with that pump Yelper and hammered on it for all it was worth.

We ended up having a couple of birds gobbling that weekend but never saw them. After a while we both took a nap in the woods and then said to heck with this, turkey hunting sucks. Threw the Yelper in the trash, sold the vest at a yard sale, and sold the shotgun.

Didn't go turkey hunting again until I was in my 30's and couldn't believe what I had been missing all those years.

[ericjames]

My uncle introduced me.

My uncle would come take me 2-3 times every year from age of 9  until he passed away when I was 17. But I wish I would have payed closer attention to what he was doing and asking more questions. Once he was gone is when i started missing going. So one morning I went by myself had them gobbling like crazy and never closed the deal, I was TV hunting i guess you could say. I wanted to see how many times i could make them gobble,I bet I heard 200 gobbles that morning. So I had to learn how to hunt and it was tough,  hunting some of the toughest birds in the state of Alabama. Or should I say some of the most pressured in Alabama. I went until I was 19 until I killed the first bird I killed by myself. I didn't get real serious about it until around 25.

[njdevilsb]

My dad has always been a hardcore deer hunter but was only a casual turkey hunter.  I was always interested in hunting growing up and when I was of age to legally hunt, I asked him if we could turkey hunt.  That fall I got my first hunting license and killed my first bird, a hen.  Since then it has been an addiction for me.  Me being so interested in it is what got my dad more into it.  He had hunted them but we basically learned together.  This was 15 years ago when I was 12 and we still hunt together 99% of the time, deer and turkey.

[drum817]

I heard a friend talking about turkey hunting and it sounded like fun!!!  I went to wally world bought a DVD to see what it was all about and after I watched the first hunt I was like..."I GOTTA DO THIS!!!"....that was ten years ago & I'm STILL hooked!!! 

[jblackburn]

I grew up on a farm in Missouri and always saw turkeys.  Had a couple neighbors and a cousin that hunted them a little bit.  Went out for the first time in 1997 with an Iver Johnson 12 gauge with a fixed full, broken bead and whatever high brass shells dad had.  Only call we had was an old Latham box.  I had no idea what I was doing, but we did have a few tame turkeys at home so I kind knew what to sound like.  Had one bird gobble at me, but I never saw him. That got my interest started.

The next year I had managed to learn how to use a mouth call, an HS raspy old hen, and bought an 835 from a neighbor.  I managed to call in an overzealous 2 year old to range and I have been hooked (obsessed, really) ever since.

[highwaygun]

I started when I was 16. A great friend of mine took me for the first time he shot a gobbler that morning and I killed one that afternoon. I was hook from then on. I can never repay old Clint for taking me in and teaching me all that he did. Same dude got me into bowhunting at about the same time.

[Skeeterbait]

I grew up in the 60's in a small Alabama town with one cafe.  My father was the game warden in the town and he often went to the cafe for coffee, sometimes taking me with him.  Everyone in the town deer hunted but only a few turkey hunted.  The turkey hunters seemed to be the "gentleman" hunters compared to all the deer hunters.  They would often sit with my father at the cafe and obviously turkey hunting was the major discussion.  I sat and listened to so many turkey tales and strategy ideas before I ever started that I had a good idea of how to turkey hunt before I ever tried it.  My father was not a hunter by that time in his life but had been earlier in his life.  He taught me to small game hunt, woodsmanship, and gun safety.  But at the age of 15 I started deer hunting on my grandparents land by myself.  Once I started driving I joined a deer hunting club and often watched turkeys while on deer stand.  So a few years later I just decided to take a shotgun and my fathers Birmingham Lynch boxes and head to the woods one spring morning.  I actually called a silent tom that first morning but I was so surprised when he showed up that I wasn't ready and he left as fast as he came.  Three days later I killed my first longbeard and the addiction set in.

[Heller]

When I was a kid I never saw turkeys in the timber, so my dad or Grandpaw never hunted them. When I was in my mid twenties I started seein turkeys when I was fishin in the cricks and when out deer huntin. After a few years of seein em around I decided to get a tag and give it a whirl. A lot of trial and error.... Mostly error, and now I got the bug.

[30_06]

Not a really good story, but basically saw a few deer hunting and thought it would be fun.  Went hunting and saw one fanned out and said to myself I want one of those on my wall. Hooked to this day.

[Kilchis]

Started turkey chasing at the age of 60.  I was a deer-hunting addict until I was about 50, and then just kind of lost my enthusiasm as the crowds got thicker and the slob types seemed to move into the majority.  I got really tired of the campsite trashing, sign-shooting and beer-can tossing pigs.  The last straw was when I accompanied the State police on a decoy operation and out of the first ten vehicles that passed the decoys, 9 of them stopped and fired even though it was  fully dark and at least an hour before legal shooting time.  I just didn't want to be identified with that kind of behavior any more.

Looking for an alternative, my hunting partner and I turned to spring turkey. It sounded so simple... In our last deer camp before we started turkey hunting literally every day for a week we had a flock of 20 to 30 turkeys IN CAMP every morning wandering between us and the fire, pecking between the tents.  How hard could turkey hunting be, right?

The only hitch is that we are both extremely sensitive to poison oak - a western cousin of poison ivy - that grows rampant in the underbrush on the west side of Oregon's Cascade Mountains.   Unfortunately, Oregon's densest turkey populations are in the heavy poison oak country, so I've had to do my gobbler-chasing out in the high desert and juniper country where the itchy brush doesn't grow. 

A slight problem is that in that arid part of Oregon the census is not birds-per-square mile, but square-miles-per-bird.  The only flock we have EVER seen was the gang in our deer camp that one year.  However, I think we are slowly dialing it in.  In five years of 1 3 or 4-day trip per year, we have heard gobbles 3 times.  That's as close as we have come to bagging feathers.  I had to lay off for two years due to a heart attack followed by some really heavy surgeries, but on our last trip I called a in a hen that literally squatted at my partner's boot; AND the next day we heard a tom! 

I can't describe how much fun it was, working that hen until my partner could have rapped it on the head with his barrel.  As it turned out, the turkey was apparently brain-damaged since even when we stood up she just clucked and started following us like a dog.  We separated by a couple of hundred yards and started working our way a mile back to camp, and this daft hen would follow me for a couple of hundred yards, then run down the hill to him for a while, then back to me, clucking her head off...we were in hysterics.  At camp she hung about 50 feet away from the tents for a couple of hours before fading into the sagebrush.  All of this was at least 8 miles from the nearest house, so we can't figure out what was with this bird - maybe she had never seen a person before.

After that incident, I was hooked for life.  I retired at the end of 2013 and this year expect to make several turkey trips, mostly solo because my partner isn't sufficiently stable to get into the field any more.  I will be taking a new guy with me on at least one trip, though.

The heart attack, followed by peritonitis surgery, followed by cancer surgery, changed my outlook on life a bit.  There is another thread on the forum about your best turkey trip ever.  Mine will be my next one, and the one after that, and the one after that........and who knows, maybe someday I'll even bag a bird!

[MuddyRiver]

I started turkey hunting back in the 80's.  I used left over 3 inch #4 lead shells from duck hunting in a 30 inch fixed full choke Rem Wingmaster Magnum.

I got a Ben Lee tape and listened to what a turkey call sounded like.  And then taught myself how to hunt them.  Back then I had to hunt Land Between the Lakes in KY since that was the only place that had a turkey population big enough to hunt in KY.  I killed my first turkey the very first morning I hunted.  And thought "this is easy".  I went 3 more years before I killed my next one.  Been after them ever since.

[jakesdad]

I started back in the mid 80's as a teenager mainly to fill in the void when I wasnt deer hunting.Had a friend whose dad and uncle were turkey killin machines(and still are)and he had gotten big into it.He even became friends with Ray Eye via mail and telephone.I thought it would be neat to try so I got some camo,a ML Lynch world champion box call and a single reed quaker boy diaphram.Used my dads winchester Model 12 20 gauge with fixed modified choke and hi-brass #4s(because 4s is what REAL turkey hunters used )Killed my first bird on my 16th birthday,stayed with it into my early twenties,really got heavy into deer hunting,then that became what it is,and id say in my late 20s/early 30s I got really addicted and cant get enough yet today.My only regret is I wasted those 5-8 years worrying about deer hunting year round instead of chasing gobblers.

[mudhen]

Started in the early 1980's in Missouri with my dad.  Kept hunting them all the way out to California....

mudhen

[tomstopper]

I basically just got started b/c I had another reason to be in the woods vs being in school.... I watched VCR tapes and hunting shows to see how my calling should sound and bought a Quakerboy Glass/slate call (which is still today my favorite call). Off to the woods I went. The weather is beautiful and so is the nature itself this time of the year. I just fell in love with it especially after a gobbler slipped in on me one day unseen & silent & let out a gobble from about 10 yards behind me (I couldn't see him due to being rested against a huge oak) which about made me crap my pants and the hair on my neck stand right up. No better sound in the timber. I was hooked....

[captin_hook]

A good friend took me turkey hunting in my mid twenties. Ever since that first day I became a addict. To this day it is my favorite hunt I've ever had. Now my best friend, and a well accomplished turkey hunter and caller, has taught me so much and made me the turkey hunter I am today.