Until today, May 8, 2004 this year’s turkey hunting season was just about a complete “wash out” due to several mitigating circumstances of which I will attempt to explain.

Several years ago, I lost my hunting lease on some prime hunting land adjacent to the Anson County Airport due to the landowner’s death and the current owners reluctance to allow hunting on his inherited land and new found wealth! This is a story in itself! If you will picture a vulture circling over a road kill, you will be close to my thoughts.

Without the benefit of any real good turkey land to hunt on, I knew it would be very difficult if nearly impossible to “bag” that elusive feathered fowl without a little planning and maybe a lot of luck to boot. Normally, a hunter will do a lot of pre-season scouting and listening to the ole gobblers sounding off at the crack of dawn in order to get as close as possible to them before they fly down off the roast. Knowing that the ole bird is within hearing range helps put the odds in ones favor but there is a 50/50 chance he will go the other way, especially if there are responding hens close by.

Well, I did get up before dawn as usual on a typical off workday and decided to try my luck a little later in the morning. I had a good idea where I could find a young gobbler if all the conditions were ideal and a tremendous amount of good luck was heading my way.

About 10:00 A.M., I drove about a mile from the house where I knew some turkeys were normally located and saw a flock of about six (6) Toms ranging from around 12 to 15 lbs. each. I wasn’t able to determine what the length of their beards were or their spur lengths as I will explain later. The birds were not making any sounds at all and were perfectly motionless. Without being heard or seen by them, I was able to harvest the largest one of the flock and really was proud of how I sneaked up on them. This was not the first or probably the last Tom turkey I will harvest using this stalk without calling technique, which is extremely effective. In fact, this technique is about 100 percent effective depending on the location and movement pattern of the birds.

Attached pix of the harvested bird. My normal equipment consists of a Remington 11-87 3 .5-inch super Magnum with either # 4 or #5 shot, Federal, Winchester or the new Remington Hevi-Shot # 5 high velocity turkey loads and a Tru-Glo adjustable sight on the fully camouflaged shotgun. Also, I use a couple turkey decoys; full-face camouflage mask and gloves and a lightweight aluminum-sitting stool. I still prefer the ole box and slate calls because with my store bought teeth, the diaphragm call makes we want to “gag”. However, this morning I took only one piece of equipment and the rest is going to be “Giblets and Gravy” or Porter’s Cajun Deep Fried Turkey with Tweet’s Old Timey Cornbread Dressing! The picture will speak for itself!

Is this what you were thinking? Go ahead and grin now!