I blasted one a week or so ago in Texas. I just can't get excited about turkeys, simple as that. Not even close to interested. Nada. Nothing there. About like watching pudding thicken. I know, it is a huge challenge to outwit a wiley gobbler, but what the hell - it's only a turkey!!! So what if the spurs are 3/8ths of an inch long and the necktie or whatever the hell they call those hairs are something like 27 inches long? Plus, there is hardly any meat on them compared to the hulks you can buy at the meat counter. Plus, you have to get up about five hours before first light, so you can go out and get covered in ticks, maybe sit on some cactus or sand-burs, plus get chiggers and maybe have an eye-ball to eye-ball encounter with a rattler. Anyhow, back to my recent hunt. The guide was somewhat shocked when I told him I had very little interest in a turkey other than to try the neat new turkey gun and loads, and to enjoy the number of birds, sounds, early morning stuff and the excitement that the other hunters experienced. I was not in it for the meat...
We were cruising looking for javelina etc. when we saw a big gobbler making a complete fool of himself out in the next pasture - he was all but jumping a hen and had two others he was trying to impress. Bottom line - after a grueling two hundred yard stalk with the F-250 I got out and yelped a couple of times when I brushed against some cactus or some other damned pointed vegetation. **** turkey wanted to jump the hen, matter of fact he did while I was loading the shotgun. He totally ignored my presence for some reason... Guide did some kind of squawking and said to shoot when his head is extended outward. **** bird kept his head close to his body for - about twenty seconds, maybe twenty five... Then he crowed or gobbled or made some turkey noise that either said he was in love-lust or he could give a **** about me standing alonside a fence post trying to hide the Ford F-250 parked ten feet behind me. Anyhow, eventually he stuck his neck out, so I aimed the brand new full camo'd turkey smacker (had a vent rib and two beads for some reason - hell I always thought shotguns had one bead), loaded with some kind of #5 shot out of a box with turkeys printed all over it, and I blotched out his head and fired. **** bird took off like I had just shot over his head - which is what I had just done. Reflexes took over and I cranked the pump and just let one fly as he ran to the right about as fast as a horned-up but somewhat surprised turkey can scramble. Second shot was not aimed, it just let go - shotgun went off by itself. Damned if the pattern centered that old bird's head - he went down like he had just taken a load of #5 shot into the motor-nerves. Fact is, he had. First shotgun turkey, others I have shot with rifles. After my heart stopped pounding - maybe 0.36 of a second, I shucked out the empty, put the big shotgun on safe and walked over to the bird. Took a few photos and went back to rifle hunting. Guide's grandmother loves turkey so I gave it to her - thought that was a nice thing to do.
Later I did enjoy listening to a hunter call in a gobbler with a neat succession of different sounds - hen and gobbler calls that suckered him in. We could hear both the real turkey and the lady hunter for some time - then BOOM and a girlie yell. She did a fine job, called that bird into range from some distance. I sat in the f-250 chewing on some jerky, sucking cold bottled water while the performance went on. That was good, as long as the truck was not too infested with ticks.
