Great father and son turkey hunting story got forwarded to me today.  Great bird, happy young turkey hunter and priceless time spent together.

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Got back last night from a quick one-day Turkey Hunt to try and get my 7 year old son his first Turkey! He shot his first deer earlier this year, but said the next thing he wanted to get was a turkey!

Decided to let him take his first one with his rifle so we wouldn't have to get so close (shotgun range). Didn't think 7 year old patience could keep him still enough to get one with a shotgun. So, set up a jake and hen deke about 35-40 yards away. We tucked up under a tree, and had a bipod hooked up to his rifle for a steady shot.

Got to the area about 6:00am. Heard some gobbling in the distance, but nothing close. As the sun started coming up I started with some soft yelps. No response. Over the next 30 minutes, I started increasing the volume of my yelps when BAM...we got a gobble to our right about 150 yards away across a field. I told my son to get ready.

Around a minute later I saw the red and blue head popping up over the grass. Then another, and another and another. Four big jakes had spotted the dekes and were on their way!

They got to the dekes and I guess they decided that the jake deke wasn't any smaller than they were so they moved away from it. Even though I wasn't calling anymore, two of then actually came right for us. They stopped about ten yards away and thankfully turned around and started walking away. They were moving around so much and with four sets of the eyes watching...I was having my son move real slow, so he hadn't had the opportunity to shoot yet. They moved back out to about 30 yards and I told my son to shoot when he could. About 5 seconds later...BOOM! His first Turkey! It was a blast!

There were 5 other hunters with us. They all saw birds but couldn't get them to come to calls. So my son was the only one to kill a bird! All day long he kept saying... "I smoked that Turkey!"

Man I love him and had a blast! Thank you God for an awesome son and for giving us times like this to be together!!

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Hunting heritage in action!

loads of blue-winged teal & wigeon on the Garwood prairie last weekend.  plenty of hunters too.  sounded like rolling thunder saturday morning.

I love teal season!

This fellow injured his wing somehow. It restricted his operating area, but he seemed to have no problem in getting fish. This was in the Galveston Bay area and doubt if he survived Ike.

One of the nice things about the tank stand is that you see a lot of wildlife. It makes the time pass fast!

I  have always thought Blue Wings were beautiful ducks.

These two were at a little dove watering hole that we put in a few years ago.

Have you ever seen a photo of a Great Blue Heron like this?  Supposedly the bird displayed like this for about 20 minutes and made a sound like a baby crying.  After seeing the photographer it stopped and then flew off.

Scaled (Blue) Quail