March 24^th and 25^th 2007 marked the first Youth Spring Turkey Season in Texas. This was exciting to my son Bobby and I, as we have believed for quite some time that the turkey season in our part of Texas starts a little late in the mating season. Usually the Gobblers are pretty henned up by the time we get to hunt turkey in the spring.

     The weekend prior to the start of the season the two of us had gone out and scouted the area to see where the turkey were roosting and traveling during the day. Our land borders the Brazos and as a result the better part of the land is 3 tiers of caprock from the river upward. We found that for some reason, the turkeys were not roosting in the areas we had become accustomed to in the past. It seemed to us that the turkey were roosting on the river, and moving upward as the day progressed. We had observed good numbers of turkey hitting the feeders at the highest level of the caprock from 6 p.m. to dark.

    Our plan was simple; we would hunt the river at first light, and stalk the turkeys up the caprock until we were successful. We wanted to have two turkeys for the freezer coming out of the weekend, but were prepared to settle for just one good gobbler if the birds did not cooperate.

   At 6 a.m. we headed along the river road to where we felt the turkeys were roosting. Unknown to us, we parked our truck along the road in the worst possible spot. We had actually split the roosting turkeys by parking our truck between two different groups of birds. At first light, the gobblers put on an amazing symphony for us. We did our best to entice a very large group of birds across the river to pitch off the roost to our side, and it was during our call and answer period that we realized we had cut the roosting birds in half. As soon as we knew that getting the birds on other side of the river was not going to happen (by this time there were so many hens yelping we knew we could not compete), we moved quickly and quietly toward the birds we knew were on the other side of our truck. This presented us with a problem, as we soon figured out that a gobbler was indeed still on the roost on our side of the river, but he was above us on the caprock. We were right underneath the gobbler. I used my Easy Yelper call, and he would answer back to us with a sound like thunder because he was so close. Finally, we heard that unmistakable loud sound of his wings as he pitched off the roost and flew right over our heads……landing about 100 yards on the road to our east. I knew that he had seen us when he was on the roost. We worked this bird hard on a call and stalk, but never got any closer than about 70 yards to him as he worked his way east and upward on the caprock. As we walked the river road trying to set up on this lone gobbler, we came to a spot where we could see across the river, and there must have been 15 to 20 gobblers, half of which were in strut, focused on a couple of hens right out in the open. It was an amazing sight to behold.

   We spent the next couple of hours calling and stalking, but by this time the gobblers were henned up and not even answering calls. We decided to quit for a while and try again later in the afternoon…..

   At around 4:30 p.m. we headed from our camp up the caprock to a location we knew turkeys were hitting late in the afternoon. We set up in a thicket of short mesquite and cedar underneath a rather large live oak. Bobby set up just in front of me on the ground, and I got behind him just a bit to do the calling. We set up two hen decoys about 20-30 yards out in front, and waited. We sat there for a good hour and a half with me calling about every 15 or 20 minutes, and not one time did I get an answer from a tom. Around 6 p.m. Bobby and I both had a bad case of sore ass, and honestly, I was beginning to believe that we would not see any birds. At about 6:15 p.m. Bobby laid back from his position in front of me and was actually lying on the ground acting stupid, and saying things like; “good call on setting up here, dad” and “gosh dad, my ears hurt from all the gobbling”. I was laughing and telling him to shut up when I caught movement out of the corner of my right eye. I looked over and there was a massive gobbler moving toward our hen decoys. I grabbed Bobby with one hand and made the signal to be quiet. As soon as the bird moved behind a large cedar, I let Bobby up and whispered for him to get into shooting position with his gun at the ready. He sat up and got into position, and it was then that we realized we had TWO big gobblers coming right into the decoys. I knew better than to even worry about hitting a call, and whispered to Bobby to make sure he killed the biggest one first. The gobblers worked right up to the decoys and at that point Bobby had a problem. His gun was sticking out between the fork of a small mesquite and he could not swing his gun to shoot without making excess movement. I whispered to him to make the kill, and he made a quick move, fired and rolled the first bird. The second bird started to run, and he took aim and fired again! He rolled the second bird. TWO nice gobblers down, neither bird ever made noise to alert us of their approach!

   The first bird was killed at about 30 yards, but the second we paced off at 68 yards. That is a heck of a shot with a .20 gauge, but I promise you that the COMP-N-CHOKE XXXFull is one wicked choke tube that really does the job on keeping patterns tight.

   Bobby and I reveled in our glory of a great hunt, and took lots of pictures. I told Bobby how hard my heart was beating when those birds were in front of us and he told me that he was surprisingly calm, and really just focused on how he was going to kill both birds. I guess he knew what he was doing.

   As he was tagging his birds, and we were laughing and recapping our hunt, I realized that this first Texas Youth Turkey Season was our First and Last together. Next year Bobby will be too old to take advantage of this great hunting opportunity. At first it made me a little sad to know that my son is grown up, but then it made me real proud because I also realized that on that hunt, he did not need me to help him kill those birds. He did as well as I could ever have done, and really made two nice shots. He has really come into his own as a hunter, and has grown into a fine young man. That is all any Dad can ask for, isn’t it?

Images and Files: View all 6 photos / videos here.