First day of turkey season was upon us. I had gone to bed at a decent time the night before to make sure I wasn’t too tired for the first day. It wasn’t until 1 A.M. but that’s still kind of early for me so when 5 A.M. came around and my dad was waking me up, it wasn’t hard to get out of bed and get ready. I got all of my hunting clothes on and had some breakfast. Like usual it took me longer than expected to get ready so when we were leaving we were a little late but it wasn’t a big deal since we weren’t going far to hunt. We got on the 4 wheeler and took off. We drove to our hunting spot and parked the quad. It was about a 300 to 400 yard walk to where we wanted to setup so it didn’t take too long to walk there either. Once we got to the area we wanted to hunt, we started looking for a good spot to setup in the fence row looking out into the field. The problem was the fence row was really thick so we only found one spot to set up. We set up looking into a small field that was surrounded by a forest but on the north end, which is the side we setup on, there was an open area that is used for tractors to cross a creek and get into the small field. This crossing was about 40 yards east of where we setup. The woods that we were in on the north side of the field was also only 50 yards thick and on the other side was a larger field. Well, when we got to the spot we liked we heard a turkey gobble about 100 yards straight to the west. My dad and I setup our decoys in the small field and we both sat down. We were facing south into the small field. My dad did some calling and the gobbler instantly gobbled back. About 10 minutes later we called but this time the gobble we heard came from the southwest so we thought it was either another turkey or the same one and it had flown off the roost into the larger field behind us. My dad kept calling and the return gobbles started to come more from the south each time. At this point were both thinking that it’s just one turkey and he’s circling around us. We kept calling and the turkey was for sure gobbling back to us and he was for sure circling around. This was the first time in years that we had a gobbler that was hot to get to us. This guy was on his way to us for sure. At this point I’m thinking we probably should have moved to the creek crossing so we could get a shot at him as he moves out into the opening. Eventually the turkey made his way into the creek crossing and he gave us a double gobble, which is when a turkey gobbles two times in one breath. This guy was coming right to our decoys. As the turkey made his way out of the creek crossing and into the field toward our two decoys he was able to see them. As soon as the turkey got about 30 yards from our decoys he went into strut, strut is when a gobbler opens up his tail feathers into a fan and puffs his body up to look big then walks around in a figure eight basically. This would have been perfect if it wasn’t for a bush that was in my line of sight. The only way I knew the turkey was out in the field was because I could make out his silhouette through the weeds. Once he went into strut he wasn’t going to come any closer. I can see that he’s strutting and he’s only about 35 yards away from me but I have no shot on him at all. My dad keeps calling to try to get the gobbler to stop strutting and move toward our decoys but he wouldn’t do it. The gobbler wasn’t going to come any closer. All I needed was for the turkey to move about two yards to the west and I would have had a shot and he would be dead right now. The gobbler eventually started to figure out that our decoys weren’t real so he went out of strut and slowly started to move away. I stood up and tried to get a shot but by then he was walking away down the fence row and was gone. I came about as close as you can get to shooting a turkey that morning without actually shooting one. All I needed was just a few turkey steps and he would have been dead but instead he stayed behind the bush and lives to die another day. My dad tried to ease my pain by telling me he thought it was just a jake, a young male, but he couldn’t tell for sure just how big it was so I’m still pretty mad we didn’t get him. We’ll be back out there this weekend to try and get another shot at him but this time we’ll know where to setup and how to get him. We’ll be ready.
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