It was the weekend before the season and the youth hunts were taking place and my Uncle took me out this year like he has the past five years. We had scouted the area and seen 15 toms two weeks before the season started. I was so pumped and could not wait for that Saturday to come and when it did I did not sleep at all.

The alarm rang at 4:00 a.m. and when we woke up it was thundering and lightning but we went anyways. We had an hour drive to the public land that we were hunting. When we got down there, someone was parked where we always park so we had to go farther down the road which means a longer walk to the spot. We got to the spot where my uncle wanted to owl hoot and when he did we did not hear anything.

So we kept walking and then finally we walked about a mile and we finally heard two birds. We got set up on them and they were roosted low on the other ridge due to the storm. My uncle and me both started to call and they would answer us every time we called. They gobbled probably 40 to 50 times on the roost. When they flew down they gobbled 20 to 30 times. It was about ten minutes before the first one came up over the hill and that's when I clicked off the safety of the 10 gauge single shot and pulled the trigger and the bird hit the ground like a sack of rocks.

When I approached the bird it was larger than I thought it was and my uncle was so proud of me and my first wild turkey. It was worth the five years of hard hunting for that one morning of glory. This has made a turkey hunter out of me for life.