My wife had never showed any interest in hunting before, so I about fell over last year when she wanted to go turkey hunting with a bow!

The story is , I went through all the equipment buying, preparation,etc., and when turkey season started, I took some time off work and we hit it pretty hard. After a couple close encounters with longbeards, She finally made a good shot on a jake at 15-20 steps. He spun in the air and managed to fly down the hill over the bench we were on and out of sight in 4-5 seconds. We got out of our blind and I kept telling her she made a good shot, but we would give him a few minutes. In her third trip to the woods my wife had done what a lot of my friends had never been able to do - kill a turkey with a bow!!!

Here's where it turned sour. We started down the hill in the direction the jake flew off. We had only gone about 50 yards when I looked out ahead and saw what I thought was a wing sticking up in the air. I raised my binoculars and sure enough, there he was. He had only gone about 75 yards from the shot.

The bad news is, as we got close to him , it became obvious a predator had been there when he crashed and feathers were ripped out all over the place and the turkey was about half ate up!! I couldn't believe the odds that this would happen , especially on her first kill. The jake was tore to shreds. My wife cried over the whole mess.

My question is, after a lot of thought and deliberation, I decided that she would not check this bird in at the check station. It was tore up and there was really nothing left anybody would want to eat, so we left it in the woods to be finished off by the critters. We felt robbed.This was our only place to hunt, and if we checked it in , she would not be able to legally hunt anymore.I know some people who feel like it should have been checked in anyway. What do you guys think???????????????????