Hey guys, as many of you may know already, Ontario's turkey season opened up a few days ago. My 12 year old son recently completed his firearms safety training, hunter's safety course and turkey hunting course successfully and was pretty excited to get at some birds this spring.
We missed opening day due to a spring cold, but we made it out for his first hunt this morning. We were very generously invited by a good friend to hunt at his property a few miles form our house, he has been seeing lots of birds for several weeks and they were following a very predictable pattern. We set up in a large field bordered by a hardwood ridge to the south and a small river to the north, a quarry on one side and a cut cornfield on the other. All in all it looked like a perfect set up! We set up our ground blind right in the middle of the field and soon realized there were birds roosted on the southern edge of the field in the hardwoods bordering our field. I went out 20 yards and staked in a single hen decoy and on the walk back to the blind a gobbler let out a single gobble right behind me on the ridge to let us know we were getting close to fly down time! After we climbed into the blind and settled in, my son noticed something white travelling along the edge of our field that bordered up to the corn field. Turns out it was a good sized coyote, it quickly spotted our decoy and started to come in but realized there was a blind there too so it circled us and got our wind. It high tailed it to the south of us into the hardwoods right under the roosted turkeys and proceeded to bark at us for about 20 minutes, all the while the gobblers were gobbling their heads off at the sound of the coyote right underneath them. At this point we thought our hunt was over before it even got started. Fortunately the coyote eventually buggered off up the ridge to the south and the turkeys started pitching down into our field about 80 yards away.
All counted, there ended up being approximately 20 birds in the field with us, 10 gobblers, 5 or 6 jakes and 5 or 6 hens. They seemed to be mildly suspicious of our blind, but not enough to scatter off. This was about 615 am, well they proceeded to put on quite a show for the next hour strutting, gobbling, and generally acting like a bunch of turkeys before they started to break up and head in different directions. At this time my buddy who was in the blind with us suggested I start making some calls as up to this point I had never made a peep. I started calling and the birds took interest, especially one of the hens, she seemed rather annoyed at me so I started to mimic what she was doing, well this got her going a bit more and she started to head our way, maybe to run her (me) off! The whole time the gobblers were following her in but staying just out range at the 50 to 60 yard mark. Finally a group of five big gobblers came in and gave my son a shot at 41 yards, well his grandpa's 12 gauge roared and sent a 2 3/4 inch load of number sixes screaming at one gobblers head and dropped him right there on the spot! The boy was vibrating so hard I thought he was going to drill a hole right there in the ground, but to be honest I think I was more excited!
We ran out to collect his bird and as you can see in the photos, he is very happy with his first turkey. It turns out the bird weighed 22 pounds, had a 10 inch beard and 3/4 inch spurs. One of my neighbours is a taxidermist and he is going to mount the tail fan and wings and beard on a nice oak plaque for us, in fact he said my son could come over and do most of the work himself if he likes-very cool!
This was the hunt of a lifetime and my only regret was we did not have a video camera with us to record this awesome event. But we have a family journal for recording our vacations and milestones and my son has already started an entry in the journal recounting our great adventure.
Thanks guys, safe huntng and happy trails.
We missed opening day due to a spring cold, but we made it out for his first hunt this morning. We were very generously invited by a good friend to hunt at his property a few miles form our house, he has been seeing lots of birds for several weeks and they were following a very predictable pattern. We set up in a large field bordered by a hardwood ridge to the south and a small river to the north, a quarry on one side and a cut cornfield on the other. All in all it looked like a perfect set up! We set up our ground blind right in the middle of the field and soon realized there were birds roosted on the southern edge of the field in the hardwoods bordering our field. I went out 20 yards and staked in a single hen decoy and on the walk back to the blind a gobbler let out a single gobble right behind me on the ridge to let us know we were getting close to fly down time! After we climbed into the blind and settled in, my son noticed something white travelling along the edge of our field that bordered up to the corn field. Turns out it was a good sized coyote, it quickly spotted our decoy and started to come in but realized there was a blind there too so it circled us and got our wind. It high tailed it to the south of us into the hardwoods right under the roosted turkeys and proceeded to bark at us for about 20 minutes, all the while the gobblers were gobbling their heads off at the sound of the coyote right underneath them. At this point we thought our hunt was over before it even got started. Fortunately the coyote eventually buggered off up the ridge to the south and the turkeys started pitching down into our field about 80 yards away.
All counted, there ended up being approximately 20 birds in the field with us, 10 gobblers, 5 or 6 jakes and 5 or 6 hens. They seemed to be mildly suspicious of our blind, but not enough to scatter off. This was about 615 am, well they proceeded to put on quite a show for the next hour strutting, gobbling, and generally acting like a bunch of turkeys before they started to break up and head in different directions. At this time my buddy who was in the blind with us suggested I start making some calls as up to this point I had never made a peep. I started calling and the birds took interest, especially one of the hens, she seemed rather annoyed at me so I started to mimic what she was doing, well this got her going a bit more and she started to head our way, maybe to run her (me) off! The whole time the gobblers were following her in but staying just out range at the 50 to 60 yard mark. Finally a group of five big gobblers came in and gave my son a shot at 41 yards, well his grandpa's 12 gauge roared and sent a 2 3/4 inch load of number sixes screaming at one gobblers head and dropped him right there on the spot! The boy was vibrating so hard I thought he was going to drill a hole right there in the ground, but to be honest I think I was more excited!
We ran out to collect his bird and as you can see in the photos, he is very happy with his first turkey. It turns out the bird weighed 22 pounds, had a 10 inch beard and 3/4 inch spurs. One of my neighbours is a taxidermist and he is going to mount the tail fan and wings and beard on a nice oak plaque for us, in fact he said my son could come over and do most of the work himself if he likes-very cool!
This was the hunt of a lifetime and my only regret was we did not have a video camera with us to record this awesome event. But we have a family journal for recording our vacations and milestones and my son has already started an entry in the journal recounting our great adventure.
Thanks guys, safe huntng and happy trails.
