Hi,
my second year living in the USA, I went hunting for the first time. After I did my hunter's ed, I learned about the mentored hunts by the Department of Fish and Wildlife and signed up for a mentored turkey hunt. My mentor Chris did an amazing job and I want to tell the story of my first two turkeys.
Turkey no. 1:
This was what Chris called "the shooting range" and laughed. He had been talking to a farmer previously who has a turkey problem. Apparently the turkeys nest across the road, get down from the trees at 7am, walk across the street, straight to the barn and have breakfast there. We sat down, camo'ed with 2 decoys at a shed halfway between road and farmhouse. Like clockwork, the turkeys walked across the road at 6:50am. Unfortunately they chose the opposite side of the shed.
We sneaked around and the birds were about 15 yards away. I bagged one. That was a little too easy.
Turkey no. 2:
Later in the same day, after some nice hikes but without any turkeys we were checking out another farmer’s property (with permission of course). We didn't see any birds from the road and were about to leave when we saw one flock. We parked, grabbed our gear and sneaked onto the property. Only to see the birds leave for the neighbours property! We were about to set up camp under a tree when we heard more birds ON the property. We sneaked into a ditch and, when exiting it, we almost ran into the birds. We ended up stalking them for almost 2 hrs, including us crawling because the birds were very alert. In the end, we ended up sitting in hollow, between trees, as the birds that we were stalking had decided to leave for the neighbours property again. After 20m of waiting and calling by Chris, the same birds were back. 10-15 yards away from where I was were about 15 birds. I chose one and bagged it.
I'm hooked!
