Youth Season

I was hopeful going into youth turkey season. I was as prepared as I’d been for any turkey season. I was ready to go on the turkey calling contest circuit, but I could mimic the guys on the CD reasonably well on most of their calls. I had full camo, even if it didn’t all match.

And Henry had overcome his fears of the shotgun. He shot it with me several times, and would kill a turkey if he hit it as well as he was hitting the paper.

We went to farm, and I returned to woods where I’ve encountered turkeys before, although I hadn’t done any preseason scouting. Henry got up with me well before sunrise without a complaint, even though he was up early trout fishing the morning before. We could still see stars in the sky as we made our way into the woods. We set up a decoy that I dug out of a closet, settled into a good hiding spot and waited.

I had hoped to hear some turkeys fly down from the roost, but all was quiet. I hoped to hear one gobbling somewhere. Nada. I tried calling, and hoped one might come to us even if he didn’t call back in reply. But we were all alone.

I don’t know how long a professional turkey hunter would say is the appropriate amount of time to wait, but it doesn’t take a lot of silence and solitude to get discouraged. With no pre-season confirmed sightings, I started wondering if I was within three miles of a turkey. It’s kind of like mushroom hunting by going to a place where you’ve gotten a mushroom before, and sitting down and staring at the soil, waiting for another one to pop up. Possible, but not likely.

We tried other locations that morning. And the next morning we tried other locations on the opposite end of the farm, with the same result.

Henry has hunted with me before several times, but always as an observer. This was the first time that the gun was in his hands on the hunt. Even though our youth-season hunts lacked the hunter to turkey dialogue that I remember from seasons past, Henry was happy as we came out of the woods. “Thank you so much for taking me turkey hunting,” he told me with a broad smile. Turkey or not, that was the best thing I could have hoped for.  And we still have regular season in a few weeks to try again.