I hunted turkeys the first year of the modern hunt (1987 I believe), and though my dedication to the sport has been rather spotty, I'd never connected - 'till monday that is. I missed one a few years ago, and now my shotgun sports a fibre optic sight.
The farm I hunted is one I've had permission on for years, but never saw so much as a track there, but recent construction nearby seems to have pushed some turkeys into the area.
I set up my spot off the edge of a stubble field on an old ATV trail, in the edge of a stand of hardwoods. I first hunted this spot the week before, and lasered the hardwoods deciding that the longest shot I might have in that direction would be under 25 yards.
In monday, I actually planned to try out another farm, but a couple of buddies called and wanted me to join them on this farm. I agreed to meet them at 5:00 AM. If you know me, I'm normally up at the crack of noon, so I wasn't expecting to get a lot of sleep, but it turned out that I hadn't fallen asleep yet when I got my wake-up call at 4:15.
There was a light ground fog when we set up, and I put a couple of decoys about 20 yds from me in the edge of the stubble field. The guy in the middle also set up a couple of decoys, and we decided he would do the yelps, while I'd occasionally join in with clucks and purrs.
After a couple of hours, nothing much was happening, so the caller decided to move off and do some scouting/calling farther to the west of us. I began doing both the yelps and some clucks and purrs.
After a couple more hours, my lack of sleep began to catch up with me, and I had to fight to stay awake. I'd just checked my watch to see what time it was to determine when I could "honourably" leave the field and get some sleep, when I began hearing some distant gobbling in the hardwoods moving from south to north.
Looking into the hardwoods I had the eastern sun at my back. The bush seemed very dark, likely due to the contrast between the bright sun and the shade. The bird seemed to go past my shooting lane out of sight, and proceed farther north.. I then heard a gobble much nearer to my right, and then I saw him in the shade, strutting and moving south again.
I was set up to shoot toward the field, so to get a shot at him, I had to twist my body around over 180 degrees. He stopped behind some brush, and then moved a couple of steps farther where I could clearly see his head. I put the fibre optics on him and shot. Simultaneously, he began to flop around, and I felt a sharp pain in my back wher I guess the recoil pushed me around just a little more than my old body is capable of. I practice shooting my crossbow from my left shoulder - I guess its time to begin doing it with the shotgun as well.
I got up and went over to him but he kept flopping - I was uncertain what to do. One of the other guys stood on his head for a while and finally he stopped. Its the first dead turkey I've ever seen, and looked monsterous to me. I guessed wellover 20 pounds. However, I weighed him at the Home Hardware, and he came out at 17.8 pounds. I was a little deflated, but he had a nice beard, and I would have been happy with anything for my first bird.
When I lasered the distance, it was 39 yards. I guess the lighting allowed me to see farther than I'd been able to earlier.
Here are some pictures, of me cracking my face trying to smile, and one each of the beard and longest spur. I tried to measure the beard while it was still on the carcass, and came up with 9 3/8, however, when I cut the beard off and re-measured it, it showed as 8 3/4. The longer spur is 13/16.
