When Giving Up Pays Off

Have you ever had a hunt that doesn't make sense, where everything does the opposite of what you think it should do? Yet even though everything seems wrong, it all works out and you harvest an animal anyways. Well, this is one of those stories.

So, it's April 7, 2018, and dad and I finally made it up for a weekend of turkey hunting at our hunting lease in Dodge County, Georgia. We are pumped, enthusiastic, and ready to chase down some long-bearded thunder chickens. Well as any good hunting story goes, the day started on the wrong foot. I slept straight through my alarm and woke up about twenty to thirty minutes late. No big deal we should still make it with enough time to get set up and get settled in before the birds start gobbling back at my yelp calls. So we make the drive over to the cotton field, which our good friend Mark allows us to hunt. We park the truck, put on our vest, and grab the decoys and start making our way to where we plan on setting up.

We are still almost two hundred yards away from the spot when all of a sudden, the treetops come alive. Multiple gobbles ring out like thunder in the early morning silence. Panic sets in and we decide to set up right where we are. I tell my dad to get set up while I throw out the decoys and get myself situated and ready to call.

My first call of the morning is a loud thundering yelp, probably too aggressive for the birds being only 100 yards away, but my adrenaline was seriously pumping. The trees come alive. There has to be at least three of them answering back. I look over towards my dad and whisper, "oh it's on now". The birds and I go back and forth for what seemed like an hour. We heard the birds fly down and we were ready. Then with one last gobble, the woods fell silent.

I hit the call about every five minutes, but no answer. I put the call down and decided to just wait a while. After about thirty minutes I call again. Nothing. The birds had gone the wrong way, farther into the neighboring property to where we couldn't chase them. Now we were really kicking ourselves for oversleeping.

We decided to hang it up for the day. We still had one more morning to get it done. We headed back to camp to do some work around the cabin and to put our game plan for the next morning together.

A view of the field from one of our deer stands

It's Sunday morning, and I shoot out of bed this morning, get my dad up and we are out the door. On the drive over we go over our game plan one more time. Our plan this morning was to set up at the top of a hill on the edge of the field, sitting right on the other side of the barbwire fence, with the decoys set up about twenty yards in front of us out in the field, and I was going to take it easy on the calling only hitting it one or two times till I heard the fly down.

We were settled in well before daylight, and we waited till we could see out in the field really well, to let out the first locator call. Nothing. Waited a little longer and let out another one. Nothing. I couldn't believe it. How could all those birds be gobbling yesterday and now I can't even hear one out in the distance. We whispered to each other a few times to determine what we wanted to do. Do we stay and wait, or do we go after them?

We decided to wait them out. I would hit the call every now and then, and dad strictly out of boredom would hit a gobble call trying to get one to answer. Well, it's about 9:30 AM we haven't heard a bird in almost three hours so, we decide to start packing it up. Dad gets up first leaving his gun near his chair and walks around to a spot next to me where there was a bigger hole in the fence to go get the decoys. I stand up and stretch I'm still hidden behind bushes. All of a sudden dad lets out a gasp and hits the deck. He looks back at me and says they are right at the bottom of the hill.

In a full panic realizing he is fifteen feet from his shotgun, he starts to crawl. I kick his foot tell him to not move and pass him my shotgun. As dad gets himself set up I peek through the bushes and see two birds, down at the bottom of the hill facing away from us. I grab my call and scratch out a soft yelp, which makes both birds snap around and face our direction. I scratch out another yelp, and both birds break into a full strut. I'm not a hundred percent sure they can fully see the decoys, from where they are at.

The two gobblers finally start walking up the hill. I don't know what it is about these Eastern turkeys where we hunt, but they love to move uphill. I'm letting out a few soft purrs as they move closer towards us. Finally, the lead bird catches a glimpse of the decoys, and immediately goes into a full strut, and starts posturing towards them. He stayed frozen there for what seemed like minutes, so I let out a fighting purr, and it was on. He breaks strut and starts moving pretty quickly to the top of the hill.

As the gobbler moves towards us I catch my dad out of the corner of my eye, starting to push himself up to try and look over the hill, not knowing that he is about to be eye to with this bird, and possibly blow the whole hunt. I say as softly as I can, "Get down, get down". He didn't hear me, this time in about as loud as I could get without spooking the birds I say, "GET DOWN!!!". He heard that one drops down and gets the gun back in his shoulder, with about five seconds to spare.

The gobbler crests the top of the hill, in a full strut, it's the first time dad has got to see some of the action. The second gobbler was about thirty yards behind the lead bird, which was making a b-line for the decoys. He moved to the decoys so quick, that dad had to swing to his right, while laying on his belly, so he was in an awkward position to shoot from. The lead gobbler gets behind the decoys blocking a shot. My eyes are dancing back and forth between both birds hoping the other one doesn't come over the hill and bust dad.

Finally, the gobbler moves just from behind the decoy, and BAM! The shot was perfect, and the bird hits the dirt flopping. Dad let's out what can only be described as a kid screaming at his Christmas present. I'm yelling for him to be quiet, and hand me the shotgun since the other gobbler had only flown maybe forty yards away. I grab the shotgun and get to the top of the hill, but I'm too late. By the time I got the bead on the bird he was already behind some bushes and takes off running when he finally sees me.

Back to dad who is now near the bird, still pumped up from adrenaline. We are both excited, shaking hands and hugging, still in disbelief of what just happened. We took pictures, and sent texts, and shared the news with hunting buddies, and mom.

That was a three-year journey of getting busted, birds getting hung up, and just not seeing them. Finally, we put one in the dirt, it was the first time we killed a bird, on a father and son hunt. Words can't even describe the relief, and excitement we felt.

Dad holding his bird!!!

Now I have definitely had hunts where I decided it was time to head home, and been blown at by deer, or busted by birds, but I have never decided to give up on a hunt, and it actually ends up as a successful hunt. We got many things from that hunt, such as memories, meat, and a trophy for the wall, but what it really did was re-spark a passion for calling and chasing turkeys. Which to tell the truth I had almost given up on turkey hunting, I was fed up with not being successful, but that single hunt just got me fired up to continue chasing these birds every spring.

This hunt was a memory with my father that I'll never forget, and I know he never will. We celebrated that night with fried turkey bites and some cold beer while laughing at the events that took place earlier that day.

That field gave us something more than we could have asked for, and it definitely wouldn't be the last time that field gave us a memory we won't forget.

Written by Rick Stewart