Scene 4:

While he found a high vantage point, Tim sat in his truck glassing the hills and valleys for turkeys, always keeping an eye open to my location, as I sat in my blind beneath him.

I wanted to hunt the same general spot as we did earlier that morning, but to set-up the blind about 20 yards further to the east. I could see a bit better in this location, so hoped I would spot some turkeys coming my way before they were right on top of me.

Sure enough, the turkeys started to appear. They were all hens that came into my shooting range and I only had a tag for a male bird. Of course that is a typical scenario in the hunting realm also.

I could only shoot the hens with my camera:

I was seeing a whole lot of turkeys… on distant hills, behind me in the brown field and below me on a ridge. I literally had to be watching every direction.

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His beard was only about an inch and a half long. He would have been fair game but I knew that with all the turkeys I had been seeing, a nice tom would eventually show up. Being that this was just the second day of the hunt with another day and a half to go, I chose to pass this turkey up. I never second- guessed myself either. I didn’t come all this way to shoot an immature bird when there was more hunting to do and this turkey hunting was just so much fun!

Just before 6:30 pm, as I was watching some hens in the field behind me, I happened to glance off to my right and saw a nice tom approaching up the hill towards me. I quickly grabbed my bow and shot. Oops. Operator error. The tom was only about 12 yards from me and my bow was set at 20 yards. I watched the arrow fly right over his back. It didn’t faze him any and he continued up the side of the hill, heading in the direction of my decoy. I figured I would watch to see what he would do to the decoy but quickly changed my mind when he stopped broadside, just 5 feet from it. “Shoot the bird, Jan!!”, was all I could think. I put down my camera and picked up my bow. I shot at the tom once again but over-compensated this time and hit him a little too low. He was hit in the wing, flew straight up 3 feet, then straight down, only to disappear below me out of sight.

I wanted so bad to get out of my blind to check on him but there were still several turkeys near by so I waited about 5 minutes when they left. The tom had taken the arrow with him about 40 yards down the hill and dropped it in a patch of sumac. Alls I got from this shot was a few feathers.  I scooped them up and admired their iridescence. This is the “trophy” I would be taking home.  I never could find the first arrow I flung.

 Just before dark, I took down my blind and gathered my stuff and headed out.

I couldn’t wait to come back tomorrow!

Turn to page 3 of  “Turkey Heaven” story

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