We’ve taken a few swipes at this over the years, but only here and there… certainly not with the diligence and fervor we reserve for our waterfowl, of course. And we’ve always come up empty-handed, until this morning. My son, Ashton, took his first wild turkey, a Kansas Eastern. The spurs were 1.25″ and a beard just a tick under 10″, taken at just under 15 yards.
The morning started off exciting, with a lot of gobbling from the roost in front of us. After a lengthy conversation, however, the chatty fellow turned out to be a jake who wanted little do do with us, making his way out of the timber a hundred yards up from us. As he was leaving we heard another series of gobbles from behind us, completely out of our field of view, but only heard it once, and it wasn’t responding to our call at all.
Five minutes later, however, I hear a bit of movement from behind the hay bales, and within a minute this guy sneaks in from our left… practically on top of us. He makes straight for the hen decoy, inspects it, starts moving towards the jake, but stops, turns directly facing us, and literally looks at each of us on the ground in front of the hay bales. You could see his head move from Ashton to me to Nick, before deciding to turn his attention back to the jake decoy. When he turned, fan up, it gave us the cover needed for Ashton to pull up and take him.
Thanks again to Nick Neff for always making time for friends and family, and helping to finally get this little box checked!
