turkeestalker
New member
This year's spring turkey stalk was different from any I'd ever experienced in the last 20 some years.
I was hunting with my oldest son on my parent's place, and it had been a pretty slow start to the morning.
With some persistence, we got lucky and struck a hot tom a bit on up in the morning. He was in a cedar thicket across a long field from where we stood just inside the woods.
We set up on trees pretty close together at the edge, me calling with him as the intended shooter.
After about a half an hour of the tom working steadily toward us, it sounded like he couldn't have been 20 yards away or so, but we still couldn't see him.
It was a very green spring early on here in Missouri, and the grass in the field was easily waist high. Perfect for him to be burning a hole in us peering through it with his 10X eyes, and us not to have a clue.
He went silent, and it was as if he was never there.
I've been busted blinking more than once, so that's not so unusual.
It got different some forty minutes later when my son decided to get up.
The day was warm so he had removed his jacket as we set up, wadding it up between his thighs on the ground.
When he lifted it after he stood, he stepped back and said, "Dad I'm glad I didn't pick up my jacket like I started to before I stood up, there's a copperhead under it!"
I was skeptical, assuming he was mistaken. To some folks, every snake looks like a copperhead and he'd not seen an actual copperhead in the wilds before.
But when I stood and stepped over to look, he was right!
Every inch of a three foot copperhead coiled up snug and ready to strike.
Must've slithered in after he'd sat down, though I don't for the life of me know how he didn't realize it. That was a BIG copperhead compared to the ones I've seen with my own eyes.
I quietly replied to him as we stood looking at it, "I'm glad that bird when silent. Lift your jacket first or harvest that bird, either way you'd have likely been bitten."
I've never had anything close to that happen in my years of stalking turkeys.
All I can say is that I truly am grateful that someone was watching over the boy that morning, bird in hand at the end of it or not.
I was hunting with my oldest son on my parent's place, and it had been a pretty slow start to the morning.
With some persistence, we got lucky and struck a hot tom a bit on up in the morning. He was in a cedar thicket across a long field from where we stood just inside the woods.
We set up on trees pretty close together at the edge, me calling with him as the intended shooter.
After about a half an hour of the tom working steadily toward us, it sounded like he couldn't have been 20 yards away or so, but we still couldn't see him.
It was a very green spring early on here in Missouri, and the grass in the field was easily waist high. Perfect for him to be burning a hole in us peering through it with his 10X eyes, and us not to have a clue.
He went silent, and it was as if he was never there.
I've been busted blinking more than once, so that's not so unusual.
It got different some forty minutes later when my son decided to get up.
The day was warm so he had removed his jacket as we set up, wadding it up between his thighs on the ground.
When he lifted it after he stood, he stepped back and said, "Dad I'm glad I didn't pick up my jacket like I started to before I stood up, there's a copperhead under it!"
I was skeptical, assuming he was mistaken. To some folks, every snake looks like a copperhead and he'd not seen an actual copperhead in the wilds before.
But when I stood and stepped over to look, he was right!
Every inch of a three foot copperhead coiled up snug and ready to strike.
Must've slithered in after he'd sat down, though I don't for the life of me know how he didn't realize it. That was a BIG copperhead compared to the ones I've seen with my own eyes.
I quietly replied to him as we stood looking at it, "I'm glad that bird when silent. Lift your jacket first or harvest that bird, either way you'd have likely been bitten."
I've never had anything close to that happen in my years of stalking turkeys.
All I can say is that I truly am grateful that someone was watching over the boy that morning, bird in hand at the end of it or not.