I’m always proud of the kids but this is a milestone!. We hunted Saturday morning, Saturday evening and yesterday morning Gunnar got his turkey!.
We had seen a gobbler in a particular field on two scouting trips and set up a blind there. Never seen or heard anything Saturday morning, Saturday evening we went in about 6pm and at 6:15 heard a gobble. The gobbler was strutting in a field about 200 yards away across the creek, next thing we know, two more gobblers come up there and they square each other up. The pair moved off to the right and the original moved off to the left. After fly up time we moved the blind across the creek for yesterday morning.
Legal shooting time here yesterday was 6:41 am so I timed it that we’d get to the blind about 20 minutes or so till. It was getting gray light as we crossed the creek, I carried Gunnar, the vest and the gun, and their snack back across the creek and in the blind, as I was going back to the creek to help adalynn across 2 gobble, it was 6:19. We get in the blind and I do some sleepy tree yelps. Next thing I know we have 5 gobbling about 250 yards to our right, across the creek and one to our left, on our side. I let them gobble on their own until I was sure they had flown down, well when they did, they all went quiet. Except one. He gobbled at every thing I gave him, quadruple gobbling, gobbling 8,9,10 times in a row with no pause. But would not budge. At 7:30, Gunnar and Adalynn were both tired, getting up at 5:30 is hard on the little fellers. Gunnar said he wanted to go home, I’m not going to push them to do anything so I told him we could. But, I told him that I was 98% positive that I could get him that turkey if he wanted to leave the blind and go work him. He said he wanted to and Adalynn wanted to stay in the blind and get cozy with a blanket. We get out and go up the field edge, get to a gate that separates two fields and get down in the creek. We go up the creek about 50 or 60 yards and it sounds like the bird is gobbling in the woods across from us. We get up on the creek bank and he gobbled and I hear the rattle in his throat, he’s right there. We get behind a log that had fallen down and he gobbled again, he had to be right in front of us, but I couldn’t see him. He gobbled again and it occurred to me that he had gobbled from where we just crossed at. I told Gunnar that we’ve got to turn around, he’s behind us. We turn around and we had one opening in the brush on the opposite creek bank, probably 6 feet wide. It wasn’t 30 seconds later and I see the gobbler pop up in that opening, about 60 yards out, strutting and coming right at us. I ask Gunnar if he sees him and he says yes, he’s in my lap and I’m helping him hold the gun, the gobbler gets about 30 yards and I cutt at him, and he faces us and gobbles right at us. I can hear Gunnar breathing hard, the turkey walks a couple steps closer, then turns to the right and takes a couple steps, he turns around and does the infamous wing tuck and right about that time Gunnar says “ can I shoot it daddy?”. I said “Go ahead bu….” BOOM. The rest will forever live in my memories as the most important turkey hunt I’ve ever been apart of.
