My wife decided that she wanted to turkey hunt this year, so we took hunter's safety together and had a great time learning about how to use a gun and shooting paper turkeys out of the blind. THA4 and I decided that we would take our wives down to the farm during third season since we would have a pretty good idea of where to sit them to get on the birds. We arrived at the farm on Saturday morning to find that the only other person, a doctor from Texas, that has permission to turkey hunt the farm has been running around on the land since Wednesday morning along with five rich buddies. I shined the lights on the Hummer parked in the farm drive and knew it wasn't going to be a good time...
After a few other mishaps and setting up twice on horrible spots, we finally got to the field that we wanted to hunt on around 2 PM. We thought that wouldn't be so bad because we saw lots of afternoon action the weekend before...we were wrong. It sucked, we heard no gobbles and saw about three hens the rest of the day. What an exciting experience for our wives!!! ha!
Liz and I decided to call a friend that told us we could come up and hunt with him if we ran out of luck on our farm. Thomas and Kathryn decided to sleep in since they had a much needed break from THA5. We got up at 3AM to drive up to his house to hunt. I told him that we didn't even need to shoot a bird, just hopefully hear some good gobbling and see something so that my wife can understand why I love going...
We got everything we hoped for and more! We ended up hearing about 10 different birds sounding off like it was thier job. We also saw a few birds fly-down. I got right on the calling to see if we could get something to come into our set up. I put the PB out, but very close to blind and had some hens out further away from the blind. We had a group of 5 jakes come in on a string. My friend had told me that Liz could shoot anything legal since it was her first hunt. We waited while the jakes got up enough muster to come try to steal a hen from the set up. When the biggest jake broke away from the group, I told her that she could shoot whenever she was ready at the bird on the right. After what seemed like an eternity to me...she put the smack down on the one we told her to shoot at about 25 yards.
The bird didn't flop too much and the jakes hung around for about 10 minutes. We stayed in the blind and I'm sure glad that we did. Liz manned the binoculars while two toms came out to the field in pursuit of one hen. The remaining four jakes proceeded to run over to the toms and start a fight over the hen. It was a great morning and we were back to the truck with pics taken by 8.
Liz really enjoyed her first hunt and I think that she'll be hooked in the future. I guess it will be time to get her some of her own clothes, huh Thomas? haha!
Shouts out to Thomas for letting Liz borrow some camo from his skinnier days
and to Fred for getting us on the turks!
Bird specs:
16 lbs
6" beard
Nubbin' spurs
Smile on her face: invaluable!
After a few other mishaps and setting up twice on horrible spots, we finally got to the field that we wanted to hunt on around 2 PM. We thought that wouldn't be so bad because we saw lots of afternoon action the weekend before...we were wrong. It sucked, we heard no gobbles and saw about three hens the rest of the day. What an exciting experience for our wives!!! ha!
Liz and I decided to call a friend that told us we could come up and hunt with him if we ran out of luck on our farm. Thomas and Kathryn decided to sleep in since they had a much needed break from THA5. We got up at 3AM to drive up to his house to hunt. I told him that we didn't even need to shoot a bird, just hopefully hear some good gobbling and see something so that my wife can understand why I love going...
We got everything we hoped for and more! We ended up hearing about 10 different birds sounding off like it was thier job. We also saw a few birds fly-down. I got right on the calling to see if we could get something to come into our set up. I put the PB out, but very close to blind and had some hens out further away from the blind. We had a group of 5 jakes come in on a string. My friend had told me that Liz could shoot anything legal since it was her first hunt. We waited while the jakes got up enough muster to come try to steal a hen from the set up. When the biggest jake broke away from the group, I told her that she could shoot whenever she was ready at the bird on the right. After what seemed like an eternity to me...she put the smack down on the one we told her to shoot at about 25 yards.
The bird didn't flop too much and the jakes hung around for about 10 minutes. We stayed in the blind and I'm sure glad that we did. Liz manned the binoculars while two toms came out to the field in pursuit of one hen. The remaining four jakes proceeded to run over to the toms and start a fight over the hen. It was a great morning and we were back to the truck with pics taken by 8.
Liz really enjoyed her first hunt and I think that she'll be hooked in the future. I guess it will be time to get her some of her own clothes, huh Thomas? haha!
Shouts out to Thomas for letting Liz borrow some camo from his skinnier days
and to Fred for getting us on the turks!Bird specs:
16 lbs
6" beard
Nubbin' spurs
Smile on her face: invaluable!
