I'm a relatively new hunter and I can honestly say that turkey is the most difficult animal I have hunted to date. I tried 5 or 6 times to get one last season with Johnny and about the same amount of times on my own to no avail. Today was my 5th attempt this season and we finally connected. We were somewhat familiar with the area and setup close to the roost before dawn. A group of 7 birds flew down and they headed away from us and didn't appear to be interested in Johnny's calling. We quickly decided to run and gun a particular tom in the group and belly crawled 75 yards closer. At this point they moved out of view and we hoofed it another 100 yards to the bush we saw them disappear behind. Johnny went left and I went right and as I came around the bush Johnny's 12ga barked.The tom dropped and flopped and the first bird was down at 6:25am. A couple high fives later and we were headed down the road in hopes of catching up with the rest of the birds we had just scattered. We ended up locating another group of birds about 750 yards away and decided to close the distance on them as well. On the way to this distant group we ran into yet another group and immediately dropped down and began to call. They responded to Johnny's calls but hung up about 150 yards away. Johnny decided to back away from me while he continued calling to try to entice the big gobbler in the group to come closer. It worked perfectly and they came in fast and I was forced to reposition myself while losing sight of every bird in the group. At this point I knew it was now or never so I popped up, got busted and had to shoot the big tom on the run at about 45 yards. I shot him at 8:00am and by 9:00am we were back to the truck. Both birds were just shy of 17 pounds. All of the scouting, failures, emotional high and lows...... It had all been worth it!
