First off let me say God has created amazing landscapes and animals here on this earth. There's nothing like walking in the complete dark in the woods heading towards "the tree". It was a gorgeous morning and getting to experience it with your children/child is what gets me fired up. We don't have many turkeys in my area and especially on the mountain. The woods here are INSANELY thick and not your "typical" area to turkey hunt. I have two old atv trails that come together in the kill zone as I call it. You can pretty much guarantee the turkeys are going to follow those trails. My youngest and I get in the woods and are just enjoying the calmness of the woods waiting for everything to wake up. Soon the birds were singing loud, squirrels running around, and deer minding their own business strolling by. I let out one little series of yelps and instantly have what sounded like two toms and a jake answer. For good measure I called again and the responded letting me know they wanted to play the game. We go silent and a few minutes later hear hens. I don't mind when hens start to call cause I enjoy getting them fired up and bringing them in, so we did just that. About 15-20 goes by and the hens are in on us. We enjoyed watching them fight around and then the startling sound of 2 toms and a jake gobbling almost simultaneously within range. It's crazy thick and we can't see them yet but I tell my youngest to get the gun pointed to the "kill zone" cause they will pop out there. Sure enough the jake pops out and I tell him "not today" on him and I was just hoping one of the toms would get in the zone. About 2 minutes later both toms come full strutting in the zone. I tell him to pick whichever he wants to shoot and let me know when. I don't think I even ended the sentence before BOOM. Turkeys take off flying and I'm wondering if he missed cause it's nowhere to be seen. We collect ourselves and I stand up. It was a BANG FLOP and didn't even twitch shot on the bird. We did our high fives, he's shaking like a leaf and I'm soaking it all in. Children grow up fast and I love every minute I get to spend with mine. He's walking out of the woods on cloud 9 and my season is the best one I've ever experienced and I haven't even pulled the trigger and probably won't. I'll switch to fishing with them now and leave the birds to do their thing for the rest of the year in hopes that we get to spend it together again next season doing the same. Tagged out on back to back Saturdays with gorgeous weather in amazing hardwoods listening to nature. It really doesn't get better than that. I am truly a blessed man.
PS… the older gentleman is my neighbor Dennis that has Alzheimer's and cancer that I take care of and show all our kills to. He doesn't have a clue to what we do but never the less he's just as excited as we are. God is good ALL THE TIME.
PS… the older gentleman is my neighbor Dennis that has Alzheimer's and cancer that I take care of and show all our kills to. He doesn't have a clue to what we do but never the less he's just as excited as we are. God is good ALL THE TIME.
