A Successful Turkey Hunting Season

By Joel Walters

Last season was one of my most successful years turkey hunting, and not for the reasons you may think. Last season was my first year of marriage and I was able to take my wife with me on opening morning. She is not a hunter and nor does anyone in her family hunt, so this was a whole new world of experience for her. I was very proud of her for taking an interest in something that is so important to me; however I do believe her favorite portion of the season was getting to go shopping–even if the shopping was only for a new Mossy Oak outfit for her to wear.

Opening morning was crisp and sunny. We walked out a ridge from my cousin’s house that had been mowed for hay. The ridge winds it way for about 800 yards and then ends in a tree line where the neighbor’s property begins. For her first hunt, I wanted my wife to be as comfortable as possible. For this reason I decided to use a ground blind and set it in a likely strutting spot in the hayfield along the woods. This would give us ample room and a comfortable chair to sit in while we waited for turkeys to visit. I set up my strutting decoy at the top of the ridge facing away from the woods and placed a hen in the breeding position a few yards away. A few yards farther away I placed a feeding hen decoy. My blind was positioned with my back to the woods facing toward the decoys in the hayfield which rolls gently downhill to our right until it hits another tree line that starts a 25 acre patch of woods leading down the hill from us. The hayfield is a favorite strutting area for toms because it is hidden from view from the longer expanse of open ground but is clearly visible by turkeys in the woods.

We got situated in our chairs and we could already hear a few gobbles behind us and below and to our right in the woods. I picked up my Cane Creek glass call and gave a few tree yelps. We immediately got a response that cut off my call so we decided to sit and not call for awhile. As the light began to shine in the hayfield in front of us, we heard a few birds pitching down in the distance. I gave my wife my hat, and while I let loose a fly down cackle with my call she beat the hat against her leg to mimic a bird flying down from a nearby tree.

For the next few minutes I made a series of clucks, yelps, and purrs on a Sla-Tek surface friction call by Knight and Hale. We heard a few gobbles behind us in the woods that seemed about 150-200 yards away. My wife had been hearing me practice my calls for weeks now and would soon show me that she had a pretty good idea of how to call in that gobbler. The year before at her parents house in Pennsylvania, while sitting on their front porch, she had yelped with her natural voice and called in a whole flock of birds to within a few dozen yards of the house. She has an innate ear for a good turkey sound, so when she told me to switch to another call I quickly switched over to my small slate call. As soon as I gave a few yelps, the gobbler reacted and seemed to close the distance. As I began to do a few soft clucks and purrs I could see out of the right window of the blind the blue head of a gobbler strutting at the edge of the woods.

Carefully I set down my calls and with a whisper told my wife to hold her ears. I stuck the barrel of my shotgun out the window, drew a bead, and fired. Disaster was avoided as I almost, but not quite, ejected the spent shell into my wife’s face. We quickly exited the blind to grab our harvest.

From start to finish, our hunt had lasted maybe 35 minutes. Never had I had such an easy time in the woods. I told my wife that turkey hunting is very seldom so much of a foregone conclusion, but I don’t think she fully believed me. As I start to prepare for the upcoming ‘09 season opener, I am hoping that the itch will strike her as well so that she might buy a tag for herself. Hopefully she will at least go along with me so that some of her good luck will rub off again this year.