Well, I had the day off of work today, so I packed up the backpack to last all day. I went out and sat where they roosted again, and when they flew down I busted them up. Must have been about 15 of them or so. It didn' t take long, and they were all calling... yelping, gobbling and everything! It was only 7am, so I went home and told Gage, my 9 year old, to get dressed, he was going to miss a half day of school. He' d never been turkey hunting before, only sat in my archery stand with me a few times this year. So he got all camo' d up and we put on the blaze orange and went back.
We walked several hundred yards to get into the area they flew towards that morning. I didn' t hear much calling anymore, so I thought they might have grouped up already. I gave a few kee-kee runs, and he asked if he could try using the crystal slate call. I figured what the heck, and let him have at it. After about 5 minutes of his calling, there was yelping about 50 yards behind us on his side! I whispered for him not to move, that they were coming... he made a few more calls, then I saw several heads pop up over a log. I said don' t call while you can see them, and when they all went behind this treetop he tried to give a few more calls, but Gage was so nervous and excited he couldn' t even make the striker work! It didn' t matter... they were coming directly towards us!
Finally, 6 or so came out of the other side, only 15 yards away from us. Yelping and clucking loudly. I picked out one of the bigger ones in the group, but had to wait a minute or so because they were so close together, there was another one behind him and I would have killed two with one shot! Finally the smaller one got out of the way, and I shot. Birds were in the air everywhere, and Gage watched as they all flew off, then I unloaded my gun and we ran to the bird. A nice jake.
He was so excited he couldn' t stop talking. I tagged and dressed the bird, and we started out of the woods. Then we heard a few more talking, and I let him try to call a few more in for practice. I set the bird and my gun off to the side and relaxed as he started calling again. He got one of them going good, and then I heard something behind us. I turned slowly, and it was a small 6 point, headed right towards us! I whispered for him to slowly turn his head since it was going to come out on his side of the tree. By the time it came into his field of view, it was only about 5 feet from him, looking directly at him! Of course, it then snorted and took off. He was pretty much overloaded at this point, and ready to go home, but this morning had to be the best morning I' ve ever had hunting! He can' t wait until he' s 12 and can take a gun along.
I' m going to dry the fan out and put it on the wall in his room and also make him a wingbone caller. I made a pair of wingbone callers from my first turkey when I was in high school, and hopefully it will be a good trophy that he' ll also get use of for a long time.
