I'm with you, even though I just turned 30....I'm like you, I caught the bug early on, I grew up around some of the best turkey hunters around......My dad started taking me out when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I carried a bolt action 410...even though I never did kill one with the 410, I got to witness and be there for alot of good hunts....and I've screwed a bunch up too but Dad stayed pretty patient with me....over the years I've watched and learned and listened, and seems like I've asked the right questions and got the right answers....That's not to say, that I do it EXACTLY like they do.......Nowadays, me and Dad hunt together as a team, and we do pretty well like that......we'll get on a bird and start calling to it, then we'll end up cutting and calling, or we'lljust flock talk to one another. In other words, we'll sound a couple/three hens and this has worked tremendously well for us.

One of he highlights of my turkey hunting career is taking a double with my dad. We got on some gobblers one morning that ended up seperating. Dad and I sit about 15 yards apart(instead of one us laying back about 40 yards). The turkeys started gobbling and like I said, they ended up seperating, one directly in front of us, and the other about 2:00 to our right. The bird to our right gobbled the most and came into view about 100 yards out. We were both sorta focused on that, when the gobbler in front of us sounded and was no more than 40 yards out. So we both got adjusted back on that one. He came in and Dad ended up dusting it at about 10 yards. After he shot, I immediately looked over to the first one that we had seen, and I couldn't see, but I heard it gobbling like mad, so grabbed Dad and pulled himdown and we started working on that gobbler and called in and I shot him.

But to answer your question, no, I don't feel like they look down on me or anything. I feel now, like I'm a respected peer rather than a kid in training. I think they'd value my opinion as much I would value theirs, and they listen to my hunts as intently as I used to listen to theirs.

I do hunt with some other guys my age, but I'm always the caller, and they're always the shooters, which is fine, and it's like they don't have any interest in learning how to call, but I'm getting ready to ween some of them. Tom Kelly said that it's OK for a while, but continously using someone else to call is like buying a piece of "A" with someone elses money.