3-13-11 youth hunt

Well................

Saturday started off as a bust.
Let me Back up to Friday. Got to woods and went for an afternoon scouting trip. I went to one spot and closed my truck door and a turkey let loose with a double gobble (2:30PM). I snuck down the road and in the woods a few yards, and got a peek of him in full strut.I snuck out to let him be since they always roost in the same general spot, so I knew where he would be. I checked out a few other spots, and went to camp.

Saturday me and my little buddy (13 year old young man) eased in before daylight, got hunkered down, and waited....Never heard a peep. No hens, no gobblers, nothing........
Got up and walked to spot #2. I heard a gobbler cut loose a couple times but we were close to the highway, And I couldn't pin point him due to traffic.
We sat down in a little palmetto patch blind I made the day before, and had him gobble one more time, but he was a no show, and we both had cramps in our arses from sitting. Packed it up and headed in.

Saturday afternoon, went to my favorite spot. Got in the 2-man ground blind and waited. At 5Pm a lone hen showed up and fed around us for about 30 min and worked her way down the hammock. she picked up a flock of jakes and I watched them sparr with each other, until just out of sight. I heard them fly up just after 6PM, so we decided to sneak out and call it a day

I hit the snooze bar a couple too many times and we had to hustle to get out there. Got in the blind at gray light, and set a lone hen decoy out at 20 yards from the blind. At flydown time I heard a gobbler cut loose down where the birds roosted. I gave a few nice soft yelps on the Yella Hammer, and nothing. Waited a few minutes and let go an aggressive fly down cackle on the mouth call. When I did a gobbler exploded behind us in the pines between us and the highway. He gobbled about 5 times and each time he was closer, but directly behind us. The last gobble was literally, 10' behind the blind. We sat there and listened to him spit & drum for about 10 minutes literally feet from us. Had he farted, I could have heard it. He had to pick a side of the blind to walk around, and he chose the right side.

To make a longer story short, we watched this bird put on a show for nearly an hour. Unfortunately, the bird stayed to our right. The way we were sitting in the blind (Anthony to my left, the bird to our right) he could not get a clear angle on him. ANd it was difficult to reposition with him in full strut at 10-20 yards. When the bird would work to our left, then a tree was blocking the shot..There was some ankle deep water to our left and the bird would not step into that while strutting.

After about an hour, he finally gobbled a couple times. This bird literally spit and drummed the whole hour we watched him. A lot of people have never heard that sound, we heard it over 500 times this morning.
Then a couple blue heads showed up. My worst fear. I felt they would either bust us, or pull the tom off. The lead hen made a bee line to the decoy, and had a mexican stand off with it. I told him we had to end this now. When the bird got clear he had to shoot. The poor boy was nervous as hell, he had buck fever so bad I could hear his heart beating and he was shaking like a leaf. He was also worried about the gun kicking him. I was trying to play coach and guide all at the same time. Anyway He said he had the dot right on his head, but somehow he shanked the shot and the bird ran off to live another day. I actually found the shot cup wadding and no feathers.

Poor boy beat himself up pretty bad for missing, but I think I got a new hunter addicted for life now. Plus I let him dump a 30-rd mag on my AR-15 to blow off frustration. He is begging me to take him hunting again, and that folks made my weekend a success......

A little grainy video I shot on my digital camera. The bird is less than 10 yards in this video. I could have shot the bird 20 times over but he was not clear for him at this time