Worst turkey hunt ever!

by Mike
(Wasilla, AK, USA)

Wild Turkey

This story takes place in a small town in Georgia. My Dad and I had decided to go turkey hunting for the week.

The first few days went OK, we had roosted some birds and things were looking good.

Then the mosquito's came which is a common occurrence. So we pulled out our mosquito suits and continued to hunt. They had gotten so bad that they were getting inside the suits.

There were swarms of them you couldn't even escape them by walking they just would fly with you.
Mosquito's made hunting unbearable.

We pushed through trying to get at least one bird or even a pig so we wouldn't go home empty handed.

Well, needless to say the animals won that season and we went home with empty coolers.

The next season went a lot better.

The mosquito's were down to normal levels and in the afternoon my dad and I were hunting a pair of fields about 400 meters apart. I can hear my dad calling about every 30 minutes or so and then Boom!

About 10 minutes later he comes strolling through my field with a nice gobbler.

I decide to stay and continue to hunt. I gave out some soft yelps about 10 minutes after he walked through. Almost instantly I see a turkey emerge from the far end of the field.

I sit and wait for him to come to the decoys, he's running to them now. He gets there and don't like what he sees so as he turns to run away I yelp and he stops and raises his head.

I shoot and he goes down. Back at camp my dads turkey had a 9 inch beard and 1 inch spurs. Mine had a 10.5 inch beard and 3/4 inch spurs.

It's amazing how much a mosquito can mess up a hunt but stay persistent and use any means necessary to defend against them even though sometimes that's not even enough.

Photograph courtesy Gary M. Stolz/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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