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first successful turkey hunt

went out on my first hunt of this season Saturday morning. got to the spot a little later than I wanted, it had been light for 10 minutes or so. gathered all my stuff together and boogied out to find a spot to set up. right after setting up the blind and throwing all my gear in I was setting up the decoys 10 yrds in front of the blind when I noticed something at the entrance of the field where I had just come in. so I couched down and made it back into the blind. got the camera, bow, calls, all ready inside as a group of 4 hens and 3 jakes quickly closed the gap to about 30 yrds. where they proceeded to mill around for 2 hours eating what I later found out to be grubs. every 15 minutes or so I did some very light soft calling and some of them would look but then continue to scratch about. I figured I had a pretty slim chance of calling the jakes over with there being 4 hens in the bunch. so I was mainly just trying to peak the interest of a hen. much to my surprise that actually winds up happening as you will see in the video... unfortunately because the birds came in so quick I was afraid to take the shoot through mesh off the blind windows which is held on with some strong and noisy Velcro for fear of scaring them off. so the camera is shooting threw that, as well as my bow which posed another problem. I had intended to use the magnus bullhead broadheads/arrows which obviously was not going to happen. I only had two other arrows with me which had expandable 2 blade rage extremes... which also isn't a very good option but was the only option I had. so I'm going to use that as my excuse for the poor first shot on that jake. and the not so great second shot as well though it was a fatal hit... wish I had thought of just cutting the mesh off at the time. all in all I had a fantastic morning and harvested my first turkey and even got a pretty good little video to boot. he wound up weighing in at 17lbs undressed, 11 dressed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km0sSUDaoH8&t=1s

Congrats! 17lb is a big jake!

Congrats! Nice Jake!

I've given up on the mesh in my blind. I shot through it twice during deer season over the last couple of years and the arrow noticeably deflected. I recovered one deer, but the other was a shoulder shot and I never recovered it. So I took all the mesh off the blind and I have no trouble at all with turkey - they don't seem to care about the mesh at all. Deer are more finicky, but I think if you keep movement to a minimum, you'll be fine.

I was in the blind with my daughter this weekend w/ the shotgun. I just pull the netting right off day one... can't stand it.

Congrats - that's awesome!

Congrats, that's great. I really like the merry-go-round around the decoy, that was hilarious.

Can someone educate me? Why do they take swipes at the decoy but not each other? I can't figure that one out.

Congratulations on a great bird! BruceP, this time of the year the birds break off of the flocks and they have smaller groups especially male birds and if your the new kid in town that just moved in they will test you for dominance. They are basically bullies,they establish a pecking order,just what I perceive. What I don't understand is sometimes if you shoot one of them then the buddies come over to the one that they have been chumming with and start to beat that bird up like they never liked him in the first place but didn't tell him that until he can't defend himself.....

thanks guys. dean that is exactly what they did after I shot mine, you can see it a bit in the video. they were absolutely kicking his a@# I felt so bad I had to run them off... I wound up plucking him and soaked it in a salt brine about 24hrs in the fridge. didn't get around to cooking it till last night. my god is he tasty! had it one time before and I thought I remembered it having a bit of a wild taste, but this bird definitely doesn't.

BQP, What did you use for a brine? Harvesting a animal is just part of the reward for all the hard work the other part is the feast! So healthy as well.

I am having sausage made out of the birds I killed this year...

Congrats. I'd take a jake any day of the week.

it was a salt water brine. think it was about a gallon of water and half a cup or so of salt. it really relaxed all the muscle tissue.

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