Well, I finally got a chance to get into the woods this morning. I arrived at the farm about 20 minutes before light and walked to one of my favorite deer hunting ridges where I had seen a bunch of turkeys this past fall. Just as it starting getting light the woods came to life with gobbling turkeys. I could distinguish at least 4 seperate gobblers. Three of them were waaay off to my right and one lone gobbler would fire up every now and again I estimated about 200 yards through the woods in front of me. I nervously picked up my box call and gave a series of 4 or 5 yelps and then put the call away. Since this was my first ever turkey hunt, I didn't want to get carried away with the calling. About 15 minutes later I saw a large bird coming through the cypress trees. Man, I thought my heart was going to beat slam out of my chest. After a very long 2 minutes I was finally able to determine that the bird in question was a hen. She was coming straight for me at a pretty quick pace. She got to within 20 or 25 yards of me and turned toward my right and started heading for the other 3 gobblers off in the distance. I picked up my box call and gave a very low cluck! She froze in her tracks and turned and looked dead at me and gave me a cluck! We clucked back and forth 3 or 4 times and she then new something wasn't right and continued on her way to the other 3 gobblers. She probably hadn't been out of my sight more than 20 seconds when I heard a shotgun blast about 200 yards through the woods in front of me. Damn! Somebody got my bird. I stayed in the woods until about 9 am and just like someone cut a light switch off, the turkeys quit gobbling. Oh well, today was a great learning experience and at least I got to see a bird up close (I knew I should have taken my camera).

Anyway to make a long story short; I'm hooked!