It seems most of my life and hunts are documented on camera for obvious reasons. Between Realtree Roadtrips, Turkey Call, and Bone Collector TV shows we need all the
footage we can get to produce quality episodes.
Every once in a while however the cameras get left at home and the hunt still goes on. Coming back from an event the other day, my wife and I decided last minute to go straight from the ATL airport and go to my Daddy’s house to spend the night where my Daddy and his wife Lisa had helped with baby sitting duties as they watched our kids as we had traveled, and while we made the phone call to inform him that we were coming he informed me that the turkeys were gobbling pretty good and that we should go the next morning, as his information was plenty enough to convince me that we indeed should go.
There was no time to line up a camera for the quick hunt, heck I didn’t have camo a gun or any turkey calls. Luckily a looked through my Roadtrips truck and found a couple of forgotten mouth calls and borrowed some of my daddy’s hammy down camo and even borrowed my step moms 20 gauge shotgun. I was ready to rock!
The next morning Daddy and I stood in the edge of timber where I cut my teeth learning to turkey hunt with the man who first took me. No camera’s, no pressure, just me and Daddy trying to hear a Booger Bottom Thunder chicken and come up with a strategy to make him flop.
At daybreak two turkeys started gobblin where they had always seemed to gobble when I was a kid. That’s right over on the neighbors land! Just like the old times.., so me and daddy just set up in the edge of one of deer plots and started catching up with everything that had been going on in the world and booger bottom along with the latest happening in my hectic schedule and every once in a while we would stop chatting long enough for me to yelp, cut and make some calls on my second hand diaphragm. The turkeys would gobble ever once in a while at the calls but still remained a half mile away. Soon however I told daddy that they seemed to getting closer, and sure enough I knew I was accurate when my daddy started hearing them because he has a hard time hearing thunder.
It didn’t take long before we noticed the two longbeards headed our way through the mix hard wood-pine mix of fairly open woods slowly closing the distance. Of course no Ga eastern gobbler seems to go down text book unless text book means hangin up at 60 yards strutting a gobbling while remaining out of shotgun range circling around and going away from you killing the optimism of collecting beard, spurs and breast meat!
Even though this was the game these two ol Thunder Chickens played on us, they were now deep on our property steady gobblin.
Two hours later, after a lot of belly crawling and soft yelps I was holding one of these bad boys by his legs toting him back up to where my dad was still setup when I left out on a belly crawl to hopefully fill a tag about 70yards away. My daddy pulled down his headnet and said with chuckle.. “dang boy, you put a know on his head”
I couldn’t help but laugh and relive right then and there all the many hunts me and ol Pops have had a chance to share together. The man who showed me how to hunt and put the passion for the hunt in me.
With no video to prove our stealthy approach to killing one of these hard headed witty southern longbeards we headed back to the same house I grew up in and had big ol down home breakfast with my wife and kids as all the youngins begged Paw Paw to take em fishing. A day like this helps make it so clear why I hunt and why we should be proud to be hunters. Everyday I get older but days like this never get old, as these days help me better reflect on the past good times and those left to come.
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