Story of the Hunt

I have hunted turkeys for 3 years and never taken a shot until last year. I called the tom out of the roost and an owl helped me to keep tabs on him. I thought he was heading my way, since he kept cutting off my calls, but you never know. He went silent, but the owl got him fired up again. He came to within 20 yards behind me, but decided to go way out and around to come in. He went about 100 yards past me to catch up to some hens. I thought he was history.

After about 30 minutes he then came strutting all the way back to me across a field. I was so excited I could barely hold still. When he was in range I pulled the trigger, "click." My gun misfired on the very first opportunity I had gotten in 3 years of hunting. I was so mad, but I tried to remain calm and get another shell in the chamber. Luckily I had a ground blind in front of me, so I pumped out the shell and put another one in. "Click." It misfired again! I pumped the gun to dislodge the shell and put it back in. "Click." My gun misfired 3 times with the strutting tom right smack in front of me! Thank God for the jake decoy. He was so focused on that decoy, I think I could have stood up and he would have never noticed. I shot him when he was about 12-15 yards away.

It was the first turkey I had ever shot, so you can imagine the nerves plus the misfirings! It ended up to be a story to remember, but at the time, I would have much rather just shot him on the first try.