I’ve already seen a few birds taken this spring on here with great stories to boot(just read coondaggers story). I figured I’d make a thread to show gobblers and the hunt stories.
My son shot his first turkey ever this spring on the first day of youth season. He’s actually not my oldest kid and I planned on taking my daughter hunting this season and my son next year, however after shooting the shotgun a couple of times my daughter decided she didn’t like the kick or want to shoot it anymore and my son was itching to try. I finally gave her the ultimatum that if she wasn’t going to shoot and practice with me handling the shotgun I was going to let her brother try and she’d have to wait till next spring. Well her final answer was that she wanted to wait and Bridger was up. He shot the shotgun with me a bunch and was ready to go come April 1st.
The night before opener my son and I went down to our first hunting spot and listened for toms on the roost. We heard several and went to bed excited for the next morning. At 4:30 my alarm went off and I was up when Bridgers alarm went off and I was happy to hear his excited feet running around getting dressed and ready to go, there’d be no prying him out of bed this morning. We grabbed a couple hard boiled eggs a juice and a cup of coffee and headed over to my parents houses to meet up with my dad.
We met my dad and drove over to the field we were going to hunt. We walked a half mile along the river and wheat field edge to a finger of land my grandpa mows and bales for his cattle. We left bridger under a mulberry tree while we crept out to set up the decoys. As soon as we cleared to trees we heard a gobble just across from us about 100 yards away. That turkey was not where we expected and had probably seen us.
After the decoys were set up and we were back in cover waiting for shooting light. Bridger was sitting in front of me with 20 gauge in his lap because it was too heavy for him to hold on his knees for that long. My dad was behind us to our right, he was going to be calling this time so I could coach Bridger if/when the turkeys came in. He started yelping when it was a little lighter out and immediately we heard gobbles from roosted toms in three different directions. They were gobbling at crows and each other and occasionally us, it was a perfect morning to get a 7 year old hooked on gobblers. When the two birds in the tree across from us pitched out and landed they were about 100yards off, both jakes but I didn’t think my son would care a bit. He got his gun on his knee and was following them slowly with his barrel but they never gobbled again and moved off to our south and disappeared. Maybe they had seen us setting up decoys. There were two gobblers off to our right in the trees gobbling and working toward us though. They were coming in but not in a hurry. Bridger was getting fidgety as his legs went to sleep. Finally we could se the birds picking their way through the trees and coming in. When they came out into the field I told Bridger to move slowly from here on out or they’d pick us out leaning against a tree no problem. My dad kept purring and lightly yelping and both toms folded out of strut and started coming toward our decoys. They stopped to strut at 30 yards and I told my son to aim his bead at the toms neck and shoot whenever he was ready. The birds kept coming and I told him the same instructions again…no shot. Finally the birds were at 16 yards in our decoys. I told him to “aim at his neck and shoot whenev…” BOOM. Tom started flopping and three generations of turkey hunters celebrated a perfect April morning.
![[Linked Image]](https://trapperman.com/forum/attachments/usergals/2023/04/full-39151-174379-img_3842.jpeg)
![[Linked Image]](https://trapperman.com/forum/attachments/usergals/2023/04/full-39151-174380-img_3849.jpeg)
Hopefully big sister is ready to try it next year
