This year was my first year out turkey hunting. I did as much reading as I could about every aspect of turkey hunting to ready my self for the five day season. I also had one of my hunting family members (Luke) accompany me in this great adventure. Luke was able to get in a lot of reading also. Together we had a ton of turkey knowledge, but no experience what so ever. This knowledge was put to the test every day we went out into the woods, and also came in very handy a few times. There were also times where the turkeys did completely the opposite of what our book smarts told us they would do. These times are where some experience would have came in handy, or maybe just one more article on turkey hunting would have gotten us out of our jams.

Day one

Our first day started off kind of late. We held off partly because of rain mostly because my wife Amber had a prior commitment early that morning. It actually worked out kind of well for us because we had only been to the spot we were going to set up once and it was much easier to find in the light vs. dark and flash lights.

Luke and I arrived at the spot to where we were going to set up, and before we set up we decided to do some calling. To our surprise after two or three calls we got a gobble (we didn’t expect this at all on our fist morning especially getting out so late). We set up the decoys and blind quickly and quietly. We also found a good spot for Luke to sit and do most of the calling.

After we set up we called back and fourth with this bird of at lest an hour and a half. He seemed to be coming in closer. Then he went further away. For the last time he came in close again, but after a short time he just stopped making any noise. We tried for about 20 min or so to get any noise out of him again and nothing.

We decided to go check out the terrain were we had heard the turkey which wasn’t too far away. We left the blind and decoys set up and would get them when we came back. After finding a possible spot to set up in the afternoon we decided to go get our stuff, and go get some lunch.

As we were packing up the decoys we heard a gobble with in 50 yards of us. We both dropped down and I crawled up to a spot where I thought the tom might go. He kept calling back to Luke and sounded like he was moving right for my opening. Then for no reason what so ever his gobbles started moving away from us and eventually just stopped.

After lunch we went for a walk on the trails around the portion of the Forrest we were hunting. We were trying to locate some birds and or find a different place to set up. Nothing at all, so we headed for our morning spot.

We were walking along a right next to were we had been hunting in the morning and Eyes (Luke) spots two turkeys down the ridge form us off in the woods. I crawled over and behind a stump all the while looking and looking for the two birds. I’m not seeing any thing then out of the corner of my eye I see a tom all puffed up just after Luke calls. I don’t have any sort of a shot because they are in some pretty dense cover. Luke kept calling but the tom never made a sound. I decided there was no way to get any shot and let them keep walking away. We never heard or saw any thing the rest of the day.

Lots of excitement on day one, but no bird and I think I’m addicted to turkey hunting.

Ben G.

Other related posts
No Turkey
Scouting for Turkeys
Turkey Tags
Hunting family
Turkey Hunting Addiction (Part 2)
Turkey Hunting Addiction (Part 3)
Turkey Hunting Addiction (Part 4)
Turkey Hunting Addiction (Part 5 final)