Tale of the Hunt

We were in the blind by 0615. Just before daylight we saw one hen on the skyline. I did a fly down cackle when she started stretching her wings and left it at that. As the sun peaked over the horizon, a tom was strutting about 200 yards away and she flew straight to him. So much for us taking the lady to dinner.

Approximately in the same area 10-15 minutes later, six birds walked out of the woods just below the hill quite a distance from my decoys of love. I clucked a few times and did a kee kee call. That seemed to get their attention but they still couldn’t see my decoys because of the hill. As they headed our way…(Mike was sitting in the blind with me) they caught sight of the decoys and started hauling turkey. It was like a scene out of a science fiction movie…shoot, they could have been some genetically engineered killer turkeys spawned by some mad granola eating tree hugging Amish farmer scientist to maim or kill hunters!

The closer they got the faster they ran. They were moving so fast I swear I could hear little sound barrier explosions behind them….I swear! My first thought was that it was a territorial thing going on. It wasn’t until later that we found out that all of the harvested birds were jakes and they were looking for loooooove. It might have been the spritz of Wife’s perfume I hit the hen decoys with earlier. Either way they looked like people running to the free gov’ment cheese truck.

As they were approaching the 50 yard line….six abreast…smoking up the clover field…we whispered to each other which two outside birds we’d both take and to do so on the count of three……..one………..two………..three……………..BOOM….BOOM….. BOOM….BOOM……..the Remington and the Benelli were barking flames…..four turkeys and one inflatable decoy lay motionless in the field. We both looked at each other as if we didn’t believe what just happened. I then took the opportunity to blame the shotgun blast to my inflatable decoy, one I’ve had since 2000, on Mike. It went on for a while until I finally fessed up and realized I’d taken out the rubber duck. (I made a feeble attempt at trying to keep it inflated with my air compressor at the house…..too many holes….I buried it in the back yard and staked out a little cross).

We high fived several times and let out a couple of redneck whoops and whooeeeee’s and to tell you the truth, you couldn’t have wiped the smiles off of our mugs with a pressure washer.