It has been a fun season. My oldest son, age 9, came with me a few times this year, hoping to get a turkey himself. I took along the bow but mostly just supported him by calling & such so he could be ready with a shot. We got some gobbles and had a couple of hens hang out for a while but the only tom to come into range was behind some brush & never showed his chest to see if he was legal. We had one older tom hang up at about 50-60 yards & lay down for a nap. We just couldn't close the deal on him.
I went out a couple of times on my own but never heard much action. The birds were quiet on those days. Don't really know why. But that's hunting.
I had one last chance to go out before family obligations would pull me away. I went out to a small acre parcel where my son & I had seen the bigger tom but setup further down the hill in hopes of getting one to come over from another flock down the hill. What transpired was among the hottest action days I've ever experienced. The entire property is only about 13 acres. But I managed to cover just about every yard of it over that day.
It's a long story that is better fit for campfire tales than forum posts. But the tail end of that hunt finished with my flinging my 6th arrow of the day at a bird. Most all my shots had landed just below the birds' feet. My last arrow finally connected. It was 22 paces away (much further than I had thought while seated on the ground in tall grass). I'm usually a gap shooter but I gave up on that last shot & just flung it purely instinctive. It hit EXACTLY where I was looking. The tom ran for about 60 yards & then collapsed. The arrow, while dulled by being shot in the dirt earlier in the day, still penetrated all the way through -- only the fletching keeping the arrow still inside of him as he ran.
While I'm humbled by my poor distance estimation, I'm grateful for the experience and for the remarkable challenge of hunting turkeys without a blind. This is my second turkey with a recurve and my only kills with a bow thus far. Hopefully, I'll work out the bugs of my distance issues before deer season. And I'm going to have to give this instinctive shooting thing some effort as well.
Topic: 2019 Turkey Madness (Read 1431 times)
