I' ve told it before, but I enjoy telling the tale, so I' ll repeat it again.

Wild turkeys had started showing up on my in-laws property at various times of the year, so I applied for permits for myself and my son for several years before finally winning the lottery and getting drawn. I hadn' t spent much time preparing for turkey hunting, hadn' t learned how to run a call or use a locator, didn' t know a thing about turkey sign such as droppings, strut marks, etc., partly because I knew I didn' t need to learn these things unless/until I got drawn.

Finally, after several years of applying for permits, I got drawn. The same year I got drawn, my son also got drawn. We went out the first morning and wandered around in my mother-in-law' s woods, using a screaming peacock as a locator call, hearing nothing, until about 10:00 in the morning. Then we decided to leave her woods and we went to my brother-in-law' s woods around 10:30 a.m. My son (who was 12 years old at the time) heard a bird he thought sounded like a turkey--it wasn' t, but I couldn' t convince him otherwise--and he decided he was going to stalk it, so off he went. I sat down and dozed for a while in the morning warmth, as we' d been up since 4:00 a.m. My son came back after a while and said he' d gone to the edge of the woods and thought he saw a turkey run back in to the woods from the old cornfield. I whipped out my box call and said " Let' s see if it responds." I cranked on that box call, and heard nothing. Then I cranked again and thought I heard a faint response gobble, but not from the direction of the old cornfield, but from the opposite way. I cranked a third time and we both heard a response gobble!!

We had a decoy, and some camo material for a screen, so the scramble was on to set up the decoy and the camo. I put the decoy in the only opening/clearing nearby, a small draw or valley where the woods weren' t so heavy, and we sat up against two trees near each other, behind the camo screen. My son had the gun, so I just worked on calling the turkey in. I called on the box call again, and the bird was closer!!!

Not wanting to scare off the turkey, I pretty much shut up. Soon, we could see not one, but two turkeys, strutting and working their way towards us!! One was noticably larger than the other, but they were coming in together. I thought I would faint, I was so excited. My heart was just pounding!!! At about 40 yards, the two of them stopped for a while, and my son whispered, asking if he should shoot. I told him to wait. The toms threw out their heads and gobbled, and I thought I was going to have a heart attack!!! The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up, and I nearly jumped out of my skin!!!

My son had a pushbutton call, and he gave a couple of soft clucks with the pushbutton, and the toms started heading closer in the direction of the decoy, which was about 15 yards from us and to our right (the toms were coming in from the left). When they got to about 25 yards, they stopped and strutted again, and it looked like they were hung up, because there was a small fallen tree branch laying in front of them. The bigger tom was in front, and so I told my son to go ahead and shoot.

He took careful aim and fired. Down went not one, but both toms!!! We raced over to their location faster than Olympic sprinters. It turned out the big one weighed 25 1/2 lbs, and the smaller one weighed 17 lbs., so he got 42 1/2 lbs. of wild turkey with one shot!!!

Later, my son told me he had never thought to shoot them both, and that all he was aiming at was the big one. He said that even though he had an autoloader, he would have never thought to shoot a second shot at the second turkey, if he hadn' t gotten it with his first shot. He said that he was so wound up that he even forgot he had more shells in the gun. (Of course, he also said he felt bad for me because I had to use my tag on the smaller turkey that he got, but I didn' t believe him.)

I had that big tom full body mounted, the littler one beard and fan boarded. I had Dave Constantine make one of his custom beer belly calls with an engraving of the two toms at the branch and the year and date. That first experience created a memory of a lifetime for me and for my son, and is a moment I always think about when I go into the woods in search of a tom. Needless to say, that first experience has made me an addict for life!!!

As I think back on that experience, I realize how incredibly lucky so many aspects of that day were, how all that luck came together. In the years since, I have been fortunate to have been very successful in the turkey woods, but each year' s lessons have made me realize how lucky I have been, and how much fortune I had that first year.