Well, this weekend was an interesting experience! Here in IL, our Youth Turkey season is 2 weekends long usually at the end of March and the first weekend in April. I've taken my oldest son out the last 2 years and we've heard some birds, but haven't seen much action and it's made for some long, cold sits in the blind. The weather is very hit or miss this time of year, and the birds seem to be pretty grouped up so it can be feast or famine. Unfortunately, we've been on the famine end of things. I personally decided to sit out turkey season in IL this year. Between the lack of birds on my hunting spots and lack of time due to other obligations, it's just not a priority for me right now. But my son was pretty bent on giving it another try. We sat the first weekend out but had planned to try hunting my lease the second weekend. There are a couple of birds around, but not many. So hopes were not high. Last week a friend of mine texted me and said we should try hunting his farm as he's been seeing a ton of birds lately and wasn't going to be able to get out much this season. I asked my son if he wanted to give it a shot, and he was all in. So he sent us a map of his farm, and we headed out after work on Friday night to listen for birds before dark. Right on queue, they lit off right at dark and we heard at least 4 or 5 of them just over the hill from us. Game on! So we waited for it to get dark dark then headed up to set up the blind. I've found this to be way easier than doing it before light - especially when you're lugging all of the gear for 2 people. Blind, chairs, tripods, decoys, and the associated electronics and snacks to film a 9-year old for 7 hours in a blind. I'm more of a pack mule than anything. Saturday morning brought a "winter weather advisory" to NW IL with 3-4 inches of snow expected. Luckily for us, the snow held off until we were just climbing into the blind about 15 minutes before legal shooting light. With the added cloud cover and snow I knew it was going to take longer than usual to get light, which was nice because we got to sleep in a few extra minutes. Right on queue as the birdies started chirping the turkeys lit up, and they were everywhere! We heard at least half a dozen gobblers plus some jakes just going crazy - most within 150 yards of us. They were fired up and I figured this was going to be a slam dunk, done before sunup type of hunt. It took about 15-20 minutes for the birds to hit the field, but they came en masse! At one point we had more than 40 birds in the field all within 150 yards. I counted no less than 6 toms and a dozen jakes. They were fighting, purring, strutting, gobbling, and chasing each other around all while the snow came down as heavy as I've ever seen it. Throughout the course of the morning, we had a group of 8 jakes come into our decoys for probably close to an hour. They would come in, hang out, mount the hen decoy, fight with each other, then leave, only to come back 20 minutes later and do it all over again. I all but forced my son to shoot one of them, but he wanted to hold out for a tom. Spoiled little bastard. He said he was going to shoot any legal bird. This photo has determined that was a lie. I took this through my binos with my cell phone. Around 10 am our decoys were covered in a few inches of snow and the field finally cleared of birds. I crawled out on my hands and knees through 3 inches of snow to clean the decoys off, then jumped back in the blind. Thank goodness for the Buddy Heater! They didn't look like that a few hours ago! I was sick most of last week and of course, passed it along to my son who started feeling sick the night before our hunt. So that morning I loaded him up on Advil like any good parent, and we went hunting! Around 11 the medicine was wearing off and he was fading pretty quick, so I told him to lay down and take a nap. We only had 2 hours left to hunt, it was blizzarding out, and we were dug in until the end. Sick or not, we werent' leaving. Just before noon, I'm busy playing on my phone because I'm bored out of my mind when I look up to see a big tom standing in our decoys. I have no idea where he came from or how long he had been there. So I scrambled to wake my sick kid up, get him off the ground and get a shot on the bird. It took about a minute for the bird to circle out from around the decoy and hold still long enough for a shot. I could hear him breathing hard and his heart pounding, which is one of the coolest experiences as a parent. He put a perfect hit on him, and in the immortal words of Rut Daniels he "didn't goooooo 20!" Not going to lie - it was a pretty awesome morning in the field with my son. He's got a pair of whitetails and now a turkey in the last 2 years, and he's addicted for sure.
Congrats to both of you. That feeling as a parent never gets old. I still get it when my son is successful and he is 34 years old!
Very cool! Thanks for sharing. Nothing better than a sharing a hunting experience with your child(ren). Even better when it’s successful! Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
