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Again With the Quickness

QuickI wasn’t feeling very quick this morning. Spilled some coffee. Seemed to lumber about the house while trying to get ready. When I finally left for the woods, I was running about 20 minutes later than I wanted to be. I kicked myself for it, too. At about 4:18 a.m., I realized it was getting light to the east.

“Crap,” I thought. “No sneaking in this morning.”

Not unless I wanted to bust turkeys, at least. I had planned to use darkness to slip into an open flat near a steep ridge where turkeys often roost. But because I was late, I’d have to find a tree atop the ridge and settle in swiftly.

As I did so, I realized that wasn’t a bad play. In fact, every bird I’d killed at that property had come from below — the open flat — to my calling at or near the peak of the ridge, where I sat. Actually, I was feeling pretty smug about my situation.

When a gobbler sounded off 75 yards to my left, I felt even better. Soon, he and some friends were hammering at everything, including a machine-gun-like salvo at some early-rising crows.

When flydown finally arrived, most of the gobblers flew down with hens to the flat, but the bird to my left sailed down silently just below the lip of the ridge. He then answered every time I yelped and meticulously worked to within 39 yards. I know it was 39 yards because that’s how many steps it took me to reach him after 2 ounces of Hevi 13 laid him out.

I was back at my truck at 5:45 a.m., so I figured I must have killed the turkey at 5:30 a.m. (Don’t get your undies in a bundle; legal shooting time where I was today was 5:14 a.m.) And honestly, I was at work by 7 a.m., with the bird photographed, cleaned and packaged.

The entire hunt was almost too fast, but I wasn’t going to gripe. I figure it makes up for some of the marathon sessions that leave us empty-handed. You can always count on those. Flash hunts? Not so much.

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