Jake’s first spring turkey hunt was highly anticipated event. I had seen a large gobbler and 3 hens in the road near one of our hog stands and had a pretty good idea which way they travelled in the morning. We dropped off my first shotgun, a youth model 20 gauge, with a local gunsmith to have a turkey choke installed and made plans to hunt the second morning of Florida’s youth season.

Our plans changed a bit when the gunsmith didn’t have the gun ready (or started). Instead, Jake carried his grandmother’s Ithaca 12 gauge (yes my mother carries a shotgun) which is the gun that I used to kill my first gobbler. This added a new challenge to videoing the hunt since he would need my help to hold the larger gun steady.

We parked about 30 minutes before daylight and set up near the road that the gobbler travelled. The cold clear morning had him in the mood to sing and around 7:00 AM he started gobbling about 200 yards west of us. I yelped to him several times and he answered before finally flying down. The hens and a jake showed up about 30 minutes later clucking and purring while they walked all around us. The jake got nervous and flew off and the hens moved off behind us allowing me to start calling to the gobbler again. He kept answering sometimes gobbling twice and three times in a row. After about 45 minutes I could hear him strutting as he came up the road about 50 yards away. Jake and I got ready and picked out an opening through the brush to aim at. When the gobbler strutted into the opening Jake took him.

We were both grinning like we had won the lottery. Jake’s first coherent thought was to text his mother a picture of him and his first bird. The gobbler weighed 18.5 pounds and had a 10″ beard. A great start to a kid’s turkey hunting career.

Jerry Torrance