Emily is now old enough (10 years) to hunt turkeys in Idaho. So we headed to northern Idaho for a week to see if we could call one in for her. It took more than one!! The first morning she got buck fever real bad watching those big toms come strutting into the decoys. We could see them coming from a couple hundred yards and when they got within range she was a shaking, heavy breathing, mass of camo. She had a real bad case of buck fever. Three big longbeards came in and she missed at 25 yards. Later a single longbeard came in and he gobbled several times so close and violent you could feel it resonate in your chest. He also came in in full strut and you could hear him spittin-n-drummin. Her only prize of that bird is the feather she is holding. She missed again. It was an awesome morning. We saw five adult toms from that setup. Just abit too much for a first timer to handle! On the walk back to the truck we decided she was gonna have to get "mean".
Our second morning we found ourselves to breaking skies as it had rained all night. We got set up and waited. They flew down much earlier than expected and with some calling we could see four adult toms at the end of the field. They started gobbling, saw the decoys and came on a dead run! At 15 yards in front of us they were packed so tight bumping and shoving each other Emily had to wait abit to let them separate enough to make a shot. She got "mean" and the 20 gauges aim was true. Third time is a charm. Bird on the ground at 5:58am. Several others were gobbling in the area so we grabbed our stuff and moved off to take pictures at the truck. Wanted to come back in a couple days for another hunt.
Gotta love the purple boots! Gotta have dry feet!
