How did you get started?

[redleg06]

I got started when I was teenager deer hunting. In Tx there's a fall turkey season and I used to get so board waiting on bucks to wonder by that I decided to hunt turkey one day. I liked it so much that I decided I'd try it in the spring....the rest is history

[bigbird]

     I don't really remember exactly how I got in the turkey hunting, but I'm glad I did! I started hunting them in the spring of 1992 I believe.  And I do remember that all my friends and their families, heck we were all big Deer hunters, a lot of them still are. But I wanted to be different I want something no one else hunted and so I read about spring turkey hunting, and what really did it was a show (I don't recall which one) on TNN (The Nashville network) and thought I got this! I remember the first call I bought was an old Lynch world champion box call then I bought an HS strut push button yelper. Back in those days where I live in south-central Indiana we didn't have near the turkey that we have now.I had to be driven or stay at my uncles to hunt. And there weren't a lot of turkeys around my uncles but that's where I remembered seeing turkeys at when I was young squirrel hunting and deer hunting so that's where I started first. Never even heard a gobble out there that year! The next year I've learned that from talking to guys that the Hoosier national Forest had birds in it and that was just a little bit west of my uncles farm. So I would get dropped off at the road and I would wander around in those hills with two friction calls that I barely knew how to use, a compass so I could find my way back out and no stinking idea what the hell I was doing! But this was the year I got bit because I remember the first cool crisp morning that I stood on a Ridgetop and stroke the paddle of that box call And a Gobbler responded and I've been stricken ever since! It wasn't until 95 until I got my first bird, a 22lb 9" bearded 2yr old.

[Gamblinman]

Dad got me started, God rest his good soul. The late Dick Kirby was influential. Hunted with him several times in Western OK.

Gman

[Mike Honcho]

I got started in college (about 30 years ago) and hunted turkey in an area I hunted quail. I had no idea what I was doing , didn't even know anyone that hunted turkeys.  So I did what I knew....I stalked them.  Would locate birds, then use deep creeks to stalk up within shotgun range , slip up the bank and was fortunate enough to harvest a big gobbler.

After that I didn't hunt them again until the mid nineties when we had some move into farmland my family owns.  I still didn't know what I was doing and mostly just callled badly and chased them around unsuccessfully.

I moved to another part of the state where there were more turkeys in 2007 and my boss took me out a couple of times...one of those times I called in a tom by myself and harvested him....my boss filmed it.  I was hooked from that point on!  Obsessed is a better word.  Now I own five turkey guns and a big toolbox full of chokes.

[IowaGobblers]

My dad and uncle started taking my when I was 7 to an old alfalfa field by our house back then and I was lucky enough to harvest quite a few big toms with them in that field and I have been hooked ever since. I still usually go as much as I can with my dad or uncle, or even taking my younger cousin out. I just love being out there with family when the birds are all fired up.

[Gobble!]

One of my good friends in high school took me. Didn't learn much from him lol but he's the one who took me first and we still hunt together at least once a spring.

[redarrow]

Field and Stream magazine got me started with an article I read. I think they were hunting Westerveldt Lodge. Joined NWTF when they starter. Membership was 5 bucks.Hunted my first time in 1979 .Didn't know nothing. Carried an H&R single 10 ga. and a Lohman box call.Seen one gobbler the same time he seen me and it was all over.Took a few years for me to get serious. Worked with Harold Knights brother Charles and another fella ,Charlie T. They took me under their wing and I've been hooked ever since.

[Limbstrutter]

I was deer hunting in TarHollow National Forest In Ohio back in 2000 and had a big flock of birds roosting on a ridge across from me every evening and got the bright idea to buy a fall turkey tag and after thousands of dollars later I'm addicted.

[bamagtrdude]

Had hunted all my life in SE Alabama on my Dad's farm, mostly squirrel & dove when I was a kid, using a 20g Franchi gun my Dad had.  In my late teens & 20's, I really didn't hunt that much ('cause of school & work), but I jumped back into hunting deer & turkey in 1999, after talking to my brother about it over Thanksgiving or Christmas break (can't remember now). 

My brother had been deer hunting all his life, and had started turkey hunting a few years before our chat, and his stories were TOO WILD to resist not trying it myself!  Pretty much went "blindly" on his advice, hopped in the car, bought my Mossberg 835 Ulti-Mag @ Wal-Mart & along with a box of Federal #4's (my brother "guaranteed" it work with the stock choke tube in the 835), and started hunting 'em anywhere & everywhere I could.  Never patterned that gun or anything; just pretty much "winged it".  Watched a few DVD's here & there; the "usual" thing, ya know.  Eventually bagged my first "silent tom" with my cousin in 2001 in Alabama, and REALLY got the fever then!    Was living in Texas, and hunted Fort Hood with a fellow NWTF member I met online, and learned a LOT about hunting Rio's from him.

So now, this is my 15th season chasing these crazy birds, and ironically - my brother & I have *never* bagged a bird when we've hunted together yet!  Have been on a BUNCH of birds over the years, but for this or that reason, we've never sealed the deal "together"; obviously, yet again, we're hoping to change that this season!  He now has a 3 year old son, and we're hoping to get him out in the field soon, too; raising up the NEXT GENERATION of turkey & deer hunters! 

[Mac Dietrich]

Dumb luck really found a great place to hunt and figured it was simple to shoot a turkey 15 yrs ago...boy how I was wrong....took me till my 2nd yr to kill 1 and have been hooked litterly ever since!!!

[turkey_slayer]

I've always loved hunting. Grew up around it with my uncle's but I really believe was born with hunting in my blood. Carried a bb gun around everywhere once I was out of diapers and shot birds. When I was 11 my 1 uncle was a very successful Turkey hunter before then and at the time told me; boy if you ever go you will be ruined. Opening day after about 2 hours I called one in and man was he right lol. Turkeys at one time would tare me up so bad so that I would get tunnel vision. Missed a few that way

[Tommy Strutsalot]

I had been hunting all my life but just whitetails and upland birds with my father.   After college a close friend of mine introduced me to waterfowl hunting and I quickly became possessed. 

Once I became a freakish waterfowl hunter, I wanted to be hunting as much as possible, and with the withdrawal that came from waterfowl season ending, the only natural thing to do to get my fix was to start worrying about turkeys.  Bought the Primos Mastering the Art DVD and began practicing my calling from February through April. 

Meanwhile, being that I can't shut my big trap about hunting, I said to a friend "I'm going turkey hunting this spring."  His reply was, "You should turkey hunt on my family's land up north, there are turkeys all over."   

First time I went up there I did no homework, no scouting, no nothing.  Hiked up the logging road and started waiting for the light to come.   Just as the morning began to get blue, a boss gobbler started hammering in a tree about 50 yards away.  I thought I was about to have a heart attack.  I heard him come down and gobble on the ground once so loud my right ear started ringing.  Heard some leaves moving behind me, so I turned around to look, and there he was in all his glory.  BUSTED and off he went. 

Hooked for life and I hope to die an old happy man sitting against a tree in the spring turkey woods.

[JuniorPre 360]

Waterfowl season just ended and I only got to use my new shotgun on just a few hunts. Heard of some turkeys in my state, it's not too popular, so I'm giving it a shot. Keep me off the couch for another month.

[GomerPyle]

I fully blame bamagtrdude for my obsession.  I started hunting deer and small game when I was maybe 14 (I'm 28 now), on a family farm in Hardeman Co, TN.  Never really had any desire at the time to turkey hunt (which is a real shame b/c that land was/is absolutely covered in turkeys).  fast forward 14yrs later to last spring.  bamagtrdude works with me and sits about 5ft away from me, he was talking about turkey hunting one day and something *clicked* in my head and suddenly I wanted to go.  he graciously invited me along to "show me the ropes" so to speak.  we went out the first morning and got to the top of a ridge, which nearly killed me since I'm out of shape, and did some light calling.  got a few gobbles and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.  got in position on the edge of a logging road.  the bird was around a bend in the road but could tell he was working his way toward us.  at some point a hen cut him off and he locked up.  Never actually got to lay eyes on him, but just hearing him gobble and hearing him working closer and closer to us was the most exciting thing I've ever experienced, hunting-wise. 

went a few more times last season but the stars never aligned and I never did bag a bird....hopefully, that changes in a few weeks!

[guesswho]

I was lost in the woods as an infant and found by a hen and her brood, she accepted me as one of her own.  Boy did she screw up!   I spent my first five years of my life living as a turkey and knew no difference.  I did realize I had to struggle a lot more than my brothers and sisters when it was fly-up time.  Fly down was a $*%@& too.    Then one day we were feeding and a loud noise went off and we were all covered with a big net.  They threw everyone else in a box and hauled them off.  They gave me to a man and woman claiming to be my parents.  After that they raised me and introduced me to the world of turkey hunting.   Been hunting ever since.  That was 1965.  And to this day when I kill a turkey I wonder if it is soimehow related to me.

Most of that story is true, but parts may have been enhanced for entertainment purposes.