Another first turkey

[TurkeyTim]

My 11 year old son shot his first Turkeys on the second day of the youth season in Nebraska.   It could not have been a more perfect hunting trip. It showed him that you have to be patience and that anything can happen pretty quickly.  We started off the first day at 5:30 in the morning and setup at our spot and started hearing gobbles right away.  I made some calls and we waited there about 5 hours and nothing came in so we decide to move to a different spot.  We heard gobbles all day long and moved several times thru out the day walking up and down hills and nothing.  He was a trooper but a little down but I told him that this was hunting.  So the next day I had set the alarm for 4:30AM but when it went off it was pouring rain and the wind was blowing like crazy and I thought I do not want a cold kid and then he would really be discouraged if we did not see anything. So we slept in until about 9:00 because we were pretty wiped out from all the walking on the first day.  So we took our time ate breakfast and the weather cleared enough to get out and he would still be pretty comfortable.

We headed back to the same area where we heard the gobbles the day before and we were setup by noon and I started calling.   At about 2:30 we heard a gobble pretty far off and another gobble about 3:15 and it was getting closer and I called to him and he gobble back at me.  I happened to look to my right and I see the turkey heading down into the ravine next to us at about 3:45.  He came up out of the ravine in full strut and started walking away from us so I gave him a cluck and he turned and started walking towards us.  He stopped at about 35 yards and knew something was not quite right.  He came out of strut and started acting like he was going to take off I told my son to shoot and he made a great shot dropping the turkey with a little flopping around 35 yards.  I am comparing this moment to the day he was born I just felt crying like a big baby being so proud of him and seeing the excitement in him.  It was totally awesome!!  All the work I did to prep him for this turkey hunt seemed to pay off and he was such a champ.  So we took some pictures and packed up and started heading  back to the truck thinking we were done for the day and we would try for another turkey the next day but that was not the case.

We walked about 15 minutes and came up over this hill and saw a flock of turkeys to our left and we got busted. They turned around and started back up the hill they came from but we heard some gobbles to our right.  So asked my son if he wanted to go head and try for a second one and he said sure so we hurried and went down this ravine to our right and popped out at the same tree where we started the first day.  That gobbler we heard busted us but I was not discourged yet. We scrambled to set out the decoys and get my son setup.  I made some hen yelps on my box call and we heard some loud gobbles to our right so we are facing the direction we just came from.   They gobbled again and they were at the top of the ravine we just came down and up out of.  I yelped again and they responded and headed down and when the got to the top of the ravine there were three toms in full strut with the bright red heads and they walked up to my jake like three siamese twins.  It did not look like they were going to separate but one of them started fighting with my jake decoy and another one finely separated enough and I told my son to shoot and he dropped the turkey at 20 yards with not a single flop.  So we shot this turkey at 5:00 and were cleaned up by 6:00 and headed back to the truck and headed for home.

To me this was probably one of the best moment in my life being able to share something with my son for the first time and thinking that this will be a life long memory for him and that I was able to help provide the memory.

Tim


He was using his new TriStar 12 ga. with a 24" barrel
Hevi-Shot Choke
3" Magnum Blend shells

1st Bird
7" beard
5/8" spurs
20lbs

2nd Bird
8 inch beard
3/4" spurs
22lbs

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[hobbes]

Congrats to you and your son.

[njdevilsb]

Congrats to you guys.   

[bayou gobbler]

Congrats!!

[bowhunter84]

congrats

[spur collector]

Congrats on a very successful hunt.

[Hognutz]

Congrats to the both of you. Does it get any better than that? I don't think so..Well done, boys..Mike

[sugarray]

Congratulations!!  Great hunt!

[Gobble!]

Congrats to you both!!

[Basser69]

Congrats on two nice birds! 

[JVA54]

        Congrats!!

[harvester]

Congrats to the young man and yourself.

[TRKYHTR]

Thats a great picture. You need to put that in the photo contest. Those turkeys are bigger than he is. Congrats to him and you for taking him.

TRKYHTR

[hookedspur]

Congrats to you and your son.

[RutnNStrutn]

Great pic!! Love his smile!! Congrats to you both!!