With some nudges from my brother in law and some begging from my two older boys I finally decided to make some time to go on our first turkey hunt.
I'm very involved in my kids local little league so getting away this time of year is not easy. We finally decided that we'd skip my 5 year olds afternoon "tball" game and head out right after my 11 year old sons "Major" game saturday morning (5/19). Normally his games last a couple hours so with a 10:00 start i was hoping to be on the road by noon. We're glad we decided to stay. He was fortunate enough to hit his first home run at the majors level. 12:15 we're on the road.
6:00 we pulled into camp. We quickly unloaded our gear. My brother in law had been into some birds that morning so we decided that all six of us would go back to the same spot.
7:00 we arrive at said spot and walk down the road a couple hundred yards from where we park. Bro in law lets out a couple calls and 3 different turkleys answer. We we decide to go for the nearest one. We walk another 50 yards and make another call. An immediate respnse tells us that this guy is close. We all try to conceal ourselves as quicly as possible. Just then the Tom appears and he's walking straight in to me at about 60 yards. I slowly bring up the gun to my sight when my 5 year decides to tell me "DAD, WHERE IS THE TURKEY?". I turn to "sush" him but not before he annouces with intense excitement. "THERE HE IS DAD." The turkey finally decided this was not what he was after and took off. After a brief discussion about the importance of being quite while hunting we moved down the road toward one of the birds we previously heard. After a couple hundred yards we called again and got another quick response. I was told to walk up the hill aways while he called from in back with the kids. I walked about 30 yards and stopped just as i caught movement ahead. There he was looking right at me from about 100 yards. Everytime my bro in law called the Tom answered but he wouldn't move. 10 minutes into this my callers decide to move away from us and call some more. Finally the bird moves. But he's moving away from me. What to do. We I saw him go behind a small bunch of trees and figured I might as well cut the distance. I move about 30 yard using what cover I can. Now I've lost sight of the bird and have not heard any calls for a few minutes. I'm getting into my best Elmer fudd stalk looking right and looking left nothing. Just then I see my callers down the hill and they are pointing in my direction. I'm looking all around and see nothing. I look back at the callers just as one of them yells to your right. I quickly turn to see the Tom standing about 20 yards away. I raise the gun and shoot. Dead bird.
They all come up and the kids are asking "is he dead" as they poke him with thier fingers. Nope he's just napping. They all laughed. I'll be the first to admit that luck was on our side and I assume that I'll never be this fortunate again while turkey hunting.
I'm truely blessed to have what I have. Family, friends and a place to live called Oregon.
We also found a little time to fish.
Late season turkey
nice turkeys good job
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