An Easter Blessing

[yoderjac]

Chip took the hunter safety class and went squirrel hunting a few times when he was 8 years old. Focus and obedience can be problematic in the pre-teen years and since you don’t get a second chance with a firearm, Chip had been on restriction from hunting. His older sister had become a quite proficient hunter shooting an 8-point buck on her first youth day deer hunt a few years ago and then harvesting her first deer with a muzzleloader this past fall. She is now a teenager and decided to pass on the opportunity to go out for spring gobbler this year. Since his behavior had been consistently improving, his parents decided to approve when I invited him to go in her place. He was so happy he was grinning from ear to ear. He even quipped to mom that she should not buy a turkey for Easter dinner because he was going to shoot one. I did my best to dampen his expectations since I know many men who have been hunting spring gobbler for many years without a harvest.
My buddy John went to our pine farm early Friday morning to listen for gobblers in preparation for taking his grandson Brandon on Saturday morning. He heard two gobblers near a blind he had used previously on a small food plot called Boomerang. I picked Chip up later on Friday morning and headed for our pine farm. We checked out a few ground blinds and sprayed the inside since they become favorite places for wasps to nest. On the way out, we saw three jakes at a standing soybean field. That was good news. Next we went through the game camera pictures from the previous two weeks. We found turkey pictures at quite a few locations. These included a band of three jakes and a long-beard that were hanging around one of our food plots.

I have a ground blind on another field that was a few hundred yards from the field they were using, so Chip and I planned to hunt there.

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[yoderjac]

While I love to teach kids to hunt, I also want to convey a sense of conservation. It is great if they can see us putting something back into the land and the sport that has been so good to us. So, Chip and I spent the rest of the afternoon working on food plots. He helped me hook up the sprayer to the tractor and fill it with water and herbicide. Next we filled a lawn roller with water and hooked it to my ATV. I have a field of standing soybeans that I’m preparing to plant again this spring. My little no-till drill is great, but it does not deal well with standing crops. So, I planned on having Chip use the ATV and roller to flatten the soybeans while I sprayed herbicide in adjacent fields.
Chip was following me on the ATV as I was driving the tractor out to the field. When get got to the end of the road, we saw the same three jakes leave standing soybeans again. The picture shows Chip slowly rolling the soybeans for me. After that, we headed out for a nice dinner and went to bed early.

Five AM came mighty early and it was a quite cold morning. Chip was excited as he adorned his hunting attire and headed out of the trailer to meet John and Brandon. He was still a bit tired as he passed in front of one of the infrared game cameras I’m testing at camp.

After greeting John and Brandon, we all headed afield; John and Brandon to the blind in Boomerang and Chip and I to the blind in a field called G8. We parked about 500 yards away from our blind. Light from the sun soon to rise was reflecting off the sky challenging the light from the nearly full moon. I had not accounted for the short legs of an eleven year-old when I set the alarm. Poor Chip was taking three steps for each of mine trying to keep up, but we wanted to have time to setup decoys before it got light.
When we got to the blind, Chip went inside and I handed him the firearm. He handed out the jake and hen decoys. I took them and found the decoy stakes that I had setup next to the survey flag at 20 yards from the blind. I set them up in a jealousy configuration with the jake mounted directly on top of and behind the hen that was squatting on the ground.

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[yoderjac]

We then settled into our chairs in the blind and began the long wait. The call of a whippoorwill first broke the crisp morning air. Next, we were haunted by the hollow echoes of owl and dove calls. Eventually other song birds and crows began to chime in, but we didn’t hear a single gobble on the roost. By 07:05, sunrise had come and gone without a gobble. I decided that all self-respecting turkeys had left their night time perches and were long on the ground, so I began to do some soft calling. I continued my blind calling on-and-off for the next hour. Finally, I heard a distant gobble probably 400 yards or more to our southwest. I responded but heard nothing back. I made a few more soft calls and stopped. Chip had not the original gobble, but he did hear the second gobble directly west; about 200 yards behind the blind. With the uncanny timing that only an eleven year-old had he said “Uncle Jack, I forgot to go to the bathroom this morning and I really have to go!” Next I asked the question that every mentor dreads asking “One or two?” Fortunately, I got the right answer. We quickly slipped out of the blind, attended to our affairs, and got back in. Just as we sat down, we heard a thunderous gobble less than 100 yards behind the blind. He was coming.
Chip trained the red-dot of his 20 gauge Mossberg on the decoys. It was only minutes when I saw the gobbler appear to the right of the blind on the edge of the pines and the clover field. He immediately went into strut.

He headed directly for the decoys. Chip was focused on the gobbler when I saw more movement to the right of the blind. Three young jakes followed the gobbler into the field. After a slight fumble with the safety, Chip was ready to shoot. I clucked to get gobbler to put his head up but he was so focused on the decoys, he didn’t have to lift his head to see the hen. So, I tried an aggressive purr. The jakes ran back into the pines for a second, but the long-beard completely ignored me and continued to strut 20 yards from the blind. Next, the jakes when back out and got behind the long-beard. Even if the gobbler had raised his head, Chip could not shoot. We waited and waited. Finally, the jakes left Chip’s line of fire, but the long-beard would not come out of strut as it circled the decoys. I don’t like to shoot birds in strut. Unless they are straight on and close, you can wound a gobbler and fail to recover it when the neck is tucked into the breast. Even if they are head-on, a shot in strut will kill the turkey but you will end up with stray pellets in the breast. But Chip had never been turkey hunting much less killed a mature gobbler. I wasn’t sure what the bird was going to do next, and I didn’t want to chance a longer shot. So, when the turkey faced us, I told Chip to aim at his red waddles and squeeze the trigger. No sooner did I get the words out of my mouth than the Mossberg roared and the turkey started flopping. The three jakes jumped but were not sure what to do. They were still in the field when Chip left the blind and headed for his bird.

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[yoderjac]

I carried his firearm for him, but Chip proudly carried his first gobbler from his first turkey hunt back to the car. As he carried the big bird from the car to the barn, he walked in front of that same game camera again.

We called 1-866-Got-Game and reported the harvest before beginning the long task of plucking it for Easter dinner.

Even without a harvest, John and Brandon enjoyed the blessings of a morning in the field together. When they made it back to the barn, Brandon and Chip enjoyed a few minutes together before John and Brandon had to leave.

Everyone went to church Easter Sunday morning. After church my wife and Chip’s mom cooked a wonderful Easter dinner featuring Chip’s first gobbler. After dinner, Chip got out his new Bible and read aloud the Easter story from John. This truly was an Easter Blessing for all of us!

 

[yoderjac]

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