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Thread: Your First

  1. #1
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    Nov 2006
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    Default Your First

    I know it's still duck season, but I can talk about turkeys pretty much anytime and I'm bored. Tell me about your first turkey.

    I actually have two.

    My cousin and I both started hunting turkeys at the same time. We were both in our thirties before we started as we didn't have turkeys where we hunted before then. We didn't hunt together, but we hunted the same club so that first year we would meet after hunts and compare notes on who had made the most mistakes that day. By the end of that first season we had both had a couple of close calls but no dead turkeys.

    The second season started out the same way. Two weeks in, my cousin called and asked if I wanted to try and double team a bird he had found the day before. What the hell, two hunters meant the chance for twice the screw ups so at least we would have something to laugh about.

    Daylight found us sitting about a hundred yards back in the woods from a new cutover and sure enough a bird started gobbling on the other side of the cutover. Looking back we probably should have moved closer but we had both gotten too close to birds before so we decided to stay where we were. We both called and go answers and not knowing any better we kept calling to him while he was on the roost. He finally flew down and started answering but wouldn't get closer.

    I decided to crawl away and call, hoping the gobbler would think I was leaving and follow.

    Back then you could rent a VCR and movies and the previous night I had watched Ben Lee kill a bunch of turkeys. The one thing I got from the video was he said if you have a bird that will answer your every call then keep calling to him so I sawed away on that old Lowman box call until I just about wore the edge down.

    Thirty minutes later he was still gobbling from the same spot and I was about ready to move but then he got quiet. Back then I didn't know that meant he was coming so I thought he had left. Just as I was about to get up the sound of my cousin's old model twelve going off damn near made me holler. I jumped up and sure as shit there was his first turkey, flopping on the ground. Well I'll be damn, it is possible to call up and kill a turkey just like they do it on the videos.


    Two weeks before the season ended I still hadn't killed a turkey of my own and we had to put my one year old son in the hospital with menningitious so I thought my season was pretty much over. Back then if a season ended on a Sunday DNR extended it to the following Monday. That Sunday night we knew my son was going to live and my wife suggested I give it one last try the next morning so I could at least get out of the hospital for a while.

    I decided to go to where I had heard a bird the last time I had been to the club and if he didn't gobble at daybreak, I would head back to the hospital. Daybreak came and no gobble to I started the walk back to the truck. I had gone about a hundred yards when I thought I heard something so I stopped.

    Nothing.

    Start walking again and again I think I hear something. Stop and listen and again, Nothing. Walk a little more and hear something again. Stop and this time I hear a gobble, back where I came from.

    I haul ass back to my original tree and start calling. He answers and I decided right then and there that if I don't kill him this is already a perfect morning. My son is going to live and I am in the Spring woods listening to and talking to a wild turkey.

    He answers me several times then I hear a pack of dogs chasing something our way. Damn if they don't run right under where he is roosting and he shuts up. When they finally leave he answers my call but damn if the dogs don't circle around and he shuts up again. This happens twice more and after the last time he won't gobble at anything I do. I figure he has left the county and decide to walk down to where I heard him to look around before I leave for the hospital.

    Because it's already May 2nd, the trees are fully foilaged and the way the firebreak twists and turns I am damn near under his roost tree before the bird that is still there sees me. I could hear him when he flushed but the leaves are so thick that I can only get glimpses of a bird flying almost directly toward me.

    He hits one little opening and I see a beard but don't have time to shoot. He hits the next and last little opening before he will be gone and I take a quick snap shot and he folds up like a 16 pound wood duck and I have my first turkey.

    He was the first and last turkey I have shot out of the tree. He wasn't called up like on the videos but his fan still holds the place of honor about my fireplace.

    That's mine. Tell me about yours.
    "My resume is the trail of destruction behind me. " Bucky Katt

  2. #2
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    Jun 2010
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    I took a buddy down to my club to show me the ropes. We walked in and he did some calling and every time he would say "he's down there you hear him". I would answer yes but I never did. I can't hear for shit lol. So I went back the next day and tried it solo. I'm sure the turkeys were laughing their ass off thinking why is this hen dying down there in the hardwoods but I did manage to get one to answer me in the tree. I'm sure after fly down I scared him off because I had no clue what I was doing. So the next day I go and try to get closer to the tree he was in the day prior and I managed to get about 200 yards from him. He gobbled just like the day before but no luck. On to the next day I decided I would get closer and throw a decoy out. At the crack of dawn I screech on this piece of junk call and he blows my head off. I was about to crap my pants. I was actually leaning against the tree he was in. When he came out of the tree he flew about 100 yards down through the woods and went to strutting. After strutting for a couple of minutes he turned and ran straight to the decoy and it was over. That was probably the most jacked up I have ever been hunting since I was a kid and killed my first deer ever. What's even funnier was I went the next day and smoked another bird. I thought man there ain't nothing to this turkey hunting. Boy did my opinion change in the years to follow lol. I just wrote this off my phone so sorry for the lay out.
    Last edited by whitty; 01-06-2017 at 12:02 PM.

  3. #3
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    My wife's uncle Benny took me on my first turkey hunt. Think he was sizing me up before I married his niece, he had no children of his own. He got me equipped with an old vest and some calls and showed me a bunch of birds on that first hunt, but they were across a huge pasture and henned up so we didn't get a shot. I was hooked anyway and went on my own the rest of that season at the Army installation where I was working at the time.
    One morning I finally had a gobbler answering my primitive attempts on a pot call Benny had given me. I got a little impatient and tried to move closer to him, ended up in a very open section of pine woods and couldn't find what I thought would be suitable cover. Then I spotted a shallow foxhole (it was a training site) and got in after setting a hen decoy on the edge of the firebreak. It was just deep enough that I felt concealed laying flat on my back and could still scratch on the pot call. The foxhole was between the decoy and where I thought the bird was. The bird answered once then shut up for a while and I did too. I thought I'd blown it, but Benny had told me to wait at least 30 minutes after calling before moving to be sure not to spook a bird that might be closer than I thought. He was right.
    The bird had been moving toward me. I couldn't see well from my spot, wouldn't recommend a foxhole, but I heard him walking. When I finally peeped up over the edge, he had passed me and was checking out the decoy. He looked at me as I peeped over the edge, so I lay back down and tried to figure how to get the gun up and get a shot. As I lay on my back, he was at about my 2 o'clock position. I didn't want to risk the movement and noise to get turned to get the gun to my right shoulder so I sat up slowly and moved it to my left and managed to get a shot off quickly before he flushed. Wasn't a great shot, but it put him down long enough for me to rush out and stomp his head. Any further than 12 yards and I probably would have missed him completely shooting lefty.
    Last edited by Beauregard; 01-06-2017 at 12:19 PM.

  4. #4
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    My first is still out there
    Last edited by ecu1984; 01-06-2017 at 04:53 PM.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by ecu1984 View Post
    My first is still out there
    Mine too, but I've got a good feeling about this spring! Boozer promised he'd help me.
    Crops are harvested, animals are killed.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by MKW View Post
    Mine too, but I've got a good feeling about this spring! Boozer promised he'd help me.
    You better start practicing walking across logs....

  7. #7
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  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by SCtrkyhntr1 View Post
    You better start practicing walking across logs....
    He's very petite. He can cross smaller logs and doesn't fall near as far as a normal sized person would.
    Them that don't know him won't like him, and them that do sometimes won't know how to take him

    He ain't wrong, he's just different, and his pride won't let him do things to make you think he's right

    They don't put Championship rings on smooth hands

  9. #9
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    So, I'll take a shot at this.

    Growing up in Sumter county, we didn't have a season until the later 80's. I can't remember if it was 87, but that sounds about right. ANywho, my grandfather, father and myself ventured over to the Sportsman's Classic to get geared up. Not only did we know nothing about turkeys, we didn't even know anyone to ask. Nobody that we knew hasd a clue how to kill them, but we were going to do our best. At the classic we bought a few Ashby Old Hen box calls, one of those HS slates with the acrylic looking striker, some cushions, a couple feather flex decoys, and some tape to put on our guns. We also met Rog Rogers and bought a couple of his little push pin calls. I still have most if not all of this jazz.

    So, we set off to try to kill turkeys. The blind and loud being led by the blind and deaf. My dad rarely had time to go, so it was my grandfather and I bumbling frequently through the woods. We actually twice called in gobblers, but we were so intent on properly identifying said gobblers, and since they didn't strut and gobble in our face, we assumed that they were hens. Over a couple of years we had spooked, flushed, chased, hooted at, called awkwardly to, interrupted the breeding of, and generally harassed every turkey that we had access to. A go pro video would be gold right now.

    So, in the third year we struck gold. My grandfather was cramping my style ( we could spook more if we split up), so we set out to build a picket fence along the travel route (a tactic that still fails to this day), and split up a bit. About an hour after daylight, I heard him shoot. Shocked and excited, I take off running down the road toward him. A turkey took off flying from a pine limb and flew over my head, so I shot him. He tumbled from the sky like so many since have done. All 13 pounds of him.

    My grandfather had missed while shooting into a group of 5 jakes, and I had cleaned up one of the escapees. I was thrilled.
    Last edited by trkykilr; 01-06-2017 at 06:35 PM.
    Them that don't know him won't like him, and them that do sometimes won't know how to take him

    He ain't wrong, he's just different, and his pride won't let him do things to make you think he's right

    They don't put Championship rings on smooth hands

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by trkykilr View Post
    He's very petite. He can cross smaller logs and doesn't fall near as far as a normal sized person would.
    That might be what he says...but I have seen other wise. I seen him flailing his arms so hard that he created more air flow than a wind mill.

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by MKW View Post
    Mine too, but I've got a good feeling about this spring! Boozer promised he'd help me.
    High probability of me shooting one in the face on the 20th

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by MKW View Post
    Mine too, but I've got a good feeling about this spring! Boozer promised he'd help me.
    Mike, he takes one step to our 3. My God that tall bastard can cover some ground.
    Member of the Tenth Legion Since 2004

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gut_Pile View Post
    Mike, he takes one step to our 3. My God that tall bastard can cover some ground.
    On the island in Georgetown Mike says "man, you do what you do, but I've never moved half that fast through the turkey woods in my life"
    Them that don't know him won't like him, and them that do sometimes won't know how to take him

    He ain't wrong, he's just different, and his pride won't let him do things to make you think he's right

    They don't put Championship rings on smooth hands

  14. #14
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    Have never even been Turkey hunting. Would like to kill one someday
    Quote Originally Posted by Chessbay View Post
    Literally translated to, "I smell like Scotch and Kodiak".
    "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees"- Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by smitch320 View Post
    Have never even been Turkey hunting. Would like to kill one someday
    If you don't talk shit about Clemson I can put you in line in front of Rick
    Them that don't know him won't like him, and them that do sometimes won't know how to take him

    He ain't wrong, he's just different, and his pride won't let him do things to make you think he's right

    They don't put Championship rings on smooth hands

  16. #16
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    Sweet poetry. Fuck a turkey.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gut_Pile View Post
    Mike, he takes one step to our 3. My God that tall bastard can cover some ground.
    I'll put his stride against scotts any day. I've never seen a man walk an 8 minute mile in hunting boots quite like him.

  18. #18
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    I missed my first oppurtunity at point blank range. It was my first time going alone and I had a strutter decoy. The bird ran straight to me and I froze. All we had was a ditch between us. He busted me before I got my gun up and I missed him running/flying away. After that it took about all season for a good friend of mine to finally have a chance to take me and show me the ropes. He called in my first longbeard. That was 4 seasons ago.since then I've personally called in 17 longbeards to their death. I think every time a turkey gobbles back at me, my heart is injured. Although ducks will always be my favorite, nothing has ever had my heart pumping like a turkey does it every time!
    867-5309

  19. #19
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    It was over quick, took about 2 minutes
    Last edited by GobblerHntr; 01-06-2017 at 10:03 PM.
    You've got one life. Blaze on!

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by trkykilr View Post
    If you don't talk shit about Clemson I can put you in line in front of Rick
    Go Tigers
    Quote Originally Posted by Chessbay View Post
    Literally translated to, "I smell like Scotch and Kodiak".
    "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees"- Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson

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