After two seasons of hunting with a traditional bow, I've finally managed to get something. A friend of mine is selling some property in the foothills and these birds don't see much pressure from hunters. So the odds were in my favor. He let me hunt there until the place sells.
I arrived long before daylight & got myself setup. I had only been out there one other time so I was working mostly from memory in the dark to find a good place to hide & set the decoys up. My first stand location was backed up to some fallen logs. As soon as I put the decoys in the ground, 5 gobblers started sounding off. I listened & did my usual wake up calling routine. The birds came down & went to some nearby hens instead of my direction. But, if I called, they still answered back. So we kept talking.
As the sun came up a bit higher, I wasn't able to get very comfortable where I was sitting and I didn't have very good visibility either. So I moved about 50 yards over to a large pine, moved the decoys and sat much more comfortably. Not having a blind, I can move fairly quickly to new locations. I watched deer come and go & saw the turkeys moving about 100 yards off. I argued with a hen that wanted to out-yelp me. Three turkeys moved along, mostly feeding way out beyond where I could tell what they were. They'd come and go a couple of times looking very relaxed. At this point, I was happy to just have talked to some turkeys and see them, too. The gobbles quieted down but we'd still chat every so often. I saw them move over to the left of a clearing, as they had done a couple of times already but was still waiting to see if they went back over while I contemplated making a stalk closer to their location.
Suddenly, they were about 30 yards away, coming out of a gully and walking slowly my direction. The leader would stop & strut while the other two followed along. The leader was a nice tom with about an 8" beard. The two followers were jakes. The tom struted, spat, drum & threw his wings down several times as he made his way closer while the jakes mostly walked & observed tom like a couple of adolescents taking lessons from the older playboy. I just tried to take deep breaths and hold still while not staring directly at them. They all circled between me and my decoys, getting a mere 3 yards away from where I sat. The jakes moved off to my left a ways while the tom stuck around longer to convince the decoy hen of his studliness. Finally, as he circled to my left, facing away & turned his head, I raised the bow. I saw his eyes again & waited with my bow up for what was probably only a few seconds but seemed like several minutes. Then he turned his head lowered a bit and, seeing the back of his head, I drew.
I'm normally a gap shooter. But this bird was close. I don't recall setting a gap or even using my clicker -- pure instinctive at this range. The arrow found its mark, just behind the thigh (kind of a quartering-away shot) and he flopped around for a while until he bled out. Meanwhile, the jakes were alarmed but took a while before they finally left, allowing me to recover the tom. After giving thanks, I paced off the shot -- 4 yards. The broadhead didn't pass through but halfway cut the beard off on its exit.
This was my first shot at an animal with a traditional bow and my first kill with a bow of any kind. On top of that, since I had taken so many years off of hunting, this was my first turkey in about 20 years. To have it all come together so well was more than I could ask for. Nearly 5 hours of calling back & forth to have a 4-yard shot from the ground without a blind and an easy recovery was about as good as it gets for me.
I may get another opportunity to hunt this property again but I'm likely going to just be calling for my son or the friend who let me hunt there. And if I go out for myself again this season, I think I'll have to give my homemade bow a try.
Topic: First Bow Kill - Turkey Story (Read 3331 times)
