Opening day Turkey.
It’s been a long time bucket list item of mine to take a turkey with my bow. Opening day had us in the ground blinds well before legal light. After 2 hours of calls and no responses, we moved to a different end of the property and as we were setting up, we spotted birds on the move. After a couple calls, the birds were headed right to us on a string. The hens walked right by me at 10 yards and the Tom and Jake went right to the decoy. I had to wait for the hens to move off before drawing. With a 10 year wait on my mind I had buck (turkey) fever big time and was shaking pretty good. I’m guessing that’s why I shot high and only had a couple feathers for our efforts. The turkey ran up the hill and stopped at 20 yards to my hunting partner who was ready to shoot with his cross bow. As he fired the limb from the cross bow clipped a tree as it retracted and threw his aim way off. End result was one extremely lucky and well educated turkey. The birds headed back in the direction of our ground blinds so we made a plan to go back there for a late afternoon hunt. As we were getting back in the blinds we heard a gobble in the distance. After a couple calls and responses we knew the birds were on their way. It took about an hour and they came in quite silent but my buddy got a beautiful Tom at 20 yards with his cross bow. As we were high fiving and getting ready to take pics, we heard another gobble. I got back in the blind and 20 min later had 2 hens and 2 Tom’s come to 25 yards but on the wrong side of the fence. They stayed there pushing each other around for a long time but we could not coax them onto the property we had permission on. It looked like they were getting ready to leave when a donkey on the land we were hunting Hee Hawed and that set the Toms off. Gobble gobble gobble. It was all I could do not to laugh. They came right back and one Tom and hen crosses the fence. I came to full draw but the only time the Tom stoped, the hen was directly behind him. Eventually I had to let down and they headed back to the other birds on the private property. As soon as they crossed the fence, the bigger Tom put a beating on the smaller one. As that was going on 2 more small flocks of birds showed up. Now there was 12 Toms, a few Jakes and 10 hens. It was a strutting and fighting frenzy. All going down at 25 - 30 yards on the wrong side of the fence. Luckily one of the bigger Toms put the run on 3 smaller ones and they crossed the fence and stopped at 15 yards. I was already at full draw and let the big guy have it. Perfect shot and as he rolled down the hill the 3 smaller Toms attacked him. I ran right up to them kicking grass and sticks at them but they could care less that I was there. Finally satisfied they had returned the beating they had received, they headed back to the rest of the birds that were leaving the area. It had been an hour and fourty five minutes since the first birds showed up. What an incredible rush of adrenaline and even more a test of my patience. More high fives and a lot of pictures. I’ve been hunting for 32 years and this was one of the most exhilarating hunts I’ve ever had. I am getting the tail and beard put on a plaque. I completely de boned all the meat and my wife slow cooked it like pulled pork (well pulled turkey really) and it was absolutely delicious. Special thanks to Greg (Gobbler Fanatic) for helping me scratch Turkey off my bow hunting bucket list.
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