Turkeys have grown on me over the years. Not in the weird way that requires a surgeon to remove a growth. More like a dog that you don’t think much of at first, but he kind of grows on you because he is around all the time and you start to see his redeeming qualities. It took a while for me to see what some fellow hunters were so passionate about when it came to turkeys, but eventually I figured it out.
It was about 36 years ago when I shot my first turkey. I was in my early teens, and to me it was a bonus animal. I was happy to have harvested it, and I was tickled with the meat. But through my young eyes, it was just a notch above a fox squirrel.
When I got into my late teens and started pursuing turkeys in the spring, the bug still hadn’t bit me bad yet. I was having a blast because I was out in the woods, but it was still all about the deer. Turkey hunting was more about just keeping me out in the woods so I could scout deer and pass the time until deer season came along again.
It wasn’t until I became a better caller and started actually calling birds in that I finally caught the turkey hunting bug. It drove me crazy sometimes, but the challenge is what I enjoyed. And when I started hunting them with…
