Mackie889
Senior Member
Took my nephew out for some turkey hunting this morning. I am not an avid turkey hunter by any means, but I did get a decent gobbler this year opening morning of the season. I decided to take him to the same box blind deer stand on a large ag field where I got mine a couple weeks ago. We had a gobbler firing off before fly-down time and after daylight, we could see him walking our direction. I am not a good turkey caller at all, so I normally just shut-up and do no calling. This guy kept getting hung up on his way toward us, so I would purr a bit and he would gobble and keep coming. We called him in from about 1000 yards when he finally hung up about 100 yards out. I was about to send a picture of him to my brother who was hunting our farm with my other nephew in another box blind, when we heard a quiet pop (pellet gun) and the turkey flies up in the air, feathers flying, and trespasser (now poacher) comes running out of the woods with no camo towards the gobbler that is now flopping on the ground! I yelled out and he takes off running back into the woods. I got down and started chasing after him. When I heard a vehicle coming up the adjacent dirt road, I started running as fast as I could, thinking it was someone coming to pick up the poacher. Needless to say, I managed to do a face plant in the freshly plowed field as my brain was running faster than my old legs would go. I wasn't hurt but was unable to catch up with him. Long story short, the game warden for our area was able to find out who it was after finding a sombrero and a pair of sunglasses laying on the ground near where the guy shot from. It turned out to be one of the Hispanic farm laborers that was working on a neighboring farm! He found out who owned the hat and sunglasses, but that guy said he had laid those down yesterday in another area and someone must have picked them up ... Anyways, the game warden managed to scare the crap out of all of the workers there by threatening to run all of their ID's. I sure hope that was enough to keep them from trying that stunt again. We were able to keep the gobbler that had an 11-1/2" beard and 1-1/4" spurs. It wasn't the way I wanted it to happen, but it did end up being a memorable experience!
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