Okay, you have your choice between the short version and the VERY long version. I ended the long version with ----------- so you can skip to that part after you read the short version if you want.
Short version:
I got to the land at 7:00 pm, got setup at 7:15 made a couple gobbles and a few hen calls, 10 minutes later heard a tom gobble back to me, 20 minutes later after talking back and forth between the box call and the live tom he made his way around some brush and stepped out into the clear 16 yards away and about 5 seconds after that he was down.
Here's a picture of him from the trail camera:
And here's a couple pictures of him with my regular camera:
VERY Long version:-------------------------------------
I got to the land at 7:00 pm about ½ hour later than I had planned. I pulled the pickup up to the abandoned livestock building about 200 yards away from the area I wanted to set up in. I gathered my decoy, calls, thermacell, rangefinder and shotgun and made my way over to the clearing. I put out the decoy near the feeder and went over to some thick brush about 20 yards away. I haven"™t gotten around to getting a full camoflauge outfit so I had on a dark green T-shirt and was counting on the thick brush to hide me. I had a couple shooting lanes and was hoping the turkey would show up in the right spot.
I have a call that makes a gobble when you shake it and used that a couple times but didn"™t get an answering gobble. I made a few calls on the box call and tried to be patient. About 5 minutes later a buck deer moved through the area about 40 yards away and looked my way a few times but evidently didn"™t see me because it just moved on by rather than running away so I took that as a good sign and figured even if I didn"™t see a turkey that made this worth while. Another 5 minutes or so and the thermacell was kicking in really well and the mosquitos and gnats were finally leaving me alone. Then I heard a faint gobble off to the northwest. I waited a while and heard some more gobbles and they were coming my way!
I"™ve read that you are supposed to be patient when making calls but it seemed to be important to keep letting the tom know that I was back here so about every 4 or 5 minutes I would use the box call and get a gobble back in reply. The tom was actually gobbling every couple minutes so it was pretty easy to keep track of him. I had set up along a clearing that had a trail coming into it from a pond and figured that would be where the turkey would come in. I guess turkeys don"™t like to go down narrow trails because the tom seemed to hang up and wouldn"™t come down the trail. We talked back and forth a few more times and the tom seemed to be heading to the east. He ended up going all the way around about 50 yards of thick trees and brush and came in from the east of me where it was much more open. He kept gobbling about every couple minutes and every 2 or 3 times he gobbled I would still let him know I was there. He was coming in pretty fast and I swung around and got my gun ready. He stepped out from behind the brush and was well in range, I saw the red head and the beard and knew he was a tom for sure. I aimed about midway up his neck and squeezed the trigger and bam, he was down. (The recoil for the super high velocity 3" magnum shell wasn"™t near as bad as I remembered from trying to pattern my shotgun the day before.) I walked over to him and he was down for good. He flapped his wings weakly a couple times but he was down for good.
I walked back over to where I was sitting and used my rangefinder to check the distance. 16 yards. I put my stuff back in my backpack and went over to pick the turkey up. It was HEAVY. I didn"™t have a scale but my best guess would be somewhere around 20 lbs. I was by myself so I had the grand idea of posing in front of one of my trail cameras and having it take my picture, but I didn"™t have the right angle figured out and sat too close to the camera so it didn"™t turn out that well. I did at least get one good picture of me holding the turkey to get a good impression of how big it was.
I took it back to the pickup and took some pictures of it with my camera. It really was a beautiful bird. I hadn"™t really thought much about what to do if I shot a turkey (I didn"™t think I would get one) so I had to callmy brotherto look it up on the internet. I ended up opening it up and taking the breast fillets out and also took the legs and thighs. I had no idea what to do with the fan and beard but I cut them off as well as I could. I got the meat in the cooler with ice and put the fan and beard in a bag to keep them dry. I measured the beard and spurs and the beard was just over 7" long and the spurs were right at 1" each. From what I understand those numbers aren"™t that impressive but I was really happy with the bird.
We cut the breast up into smaller strips and put them on the grill and they were really good. We grilled the legs and thighs as well and they tasted good but were very tough.
END of very long version---------------------------
I spent the night and was hoping to see some pigs or raccoons but didn"™t see anything all night. The wind was blowing pretty hard so maybe they decided to just hunker down and not move around.
I did see 4 more deer on Saturday morning while I was looking around to see if I could spot some pigs. I also watched some turkeys about 600 yards away on the neighbors property doing some dancing. There was 1 tom and 3 hens and it seemed more like the hens were trying to avoid the tom than anything else, but I felt good that there were for sure more turkeys in the area and I hadn"™t just shot the only one around.
I looked at the pictures on my cameras and since I setup my automatic feeder down near the creek and the deer have been using it pretty good. I didn"™t see any turkeys using it which is why I set it up down there but it turns out I didn"™t need anything but a hen call to get the turkey to show up. I also have some BIG boar hogs coming around using the feeder some, and of course raccoons.
Okay, I think I"™m done with my novel now!
Nathan
Got my first turkey this weekend!
