A HUNTING STORY

This Saturday morning I went on one of very few turkey hunts I have ever been on with a couple of great friends Kent Thomas and Nick Dickson. Kent is a football coach at Midland Lee high school and Nick is the head football coach at Roby c.i.s.d. We were hunting on Nick's farm between Roby and Rotan. Straight from the get go we found birds. We hadn't even made it one mile from the house and spotted 2 birds crossing the road into the pasture we were hunting. Immediately we bailed out and set up. Kent is a turkey calling fanatic and was ready immediately with breeder decoys and the perfect set up. Kent's first set of calls from behind me were very consistent with the normal first set;relatively aggressive with gobbler location in mind. No answer was obtained on that first set or any of the rest for that matter but there were birds coming. After 10 to 12 minutes of calling on the M.A.D. Cherry Bomb Box Turkey Call
and a super realistic compilation of HS strut reed clucks, a couple wrinkly old heads popped up in the switch grass in front of us. Kent's tell tale purr from his Lynch's Jet Slate Turkey Call resounded signalling to me that he knew we were on birds. Tension started filling my gut and totally overshadowed the fact that i had a very large mesquite thorn penetrating my ass cheek. The birds came in together right in front of me and moved to my 2 o'clock at 12 yards addressing the breeder decoys as if to peek in on the show and get a freebie. At that point I could see that the hunt was futile. HENS! DAMN...no beard in sight besides my goatee that was really getting irritated by my head cover...I was overwhelmed with a few different feelings. The immediate feeling was consistent with any other hunt I had ever been on where animals got really close. Damn that was cool! the next thing that entered my mind was this ; we better enjoy that encounter because it could be the last one this weekend. Unfortunately ,I was right.we didn't call in another bird all weekend due to excessive west Texas wind. I have no regrets about the hunt keeping in mind that a bad day of hunting is always better than the best day of work...we'll get on'em again soon...

Firearm : winchester model 1300 20 ga. #4 shot
Calls: M.A.D. cherry bomb slate and box call , HS strut reeds
location : Roby , T.X.
outfitter : Mesquite Outfitters