Youth turkey hunt

[wyldewal]

I just found out this morning at 8:00 that My son was drawn for the youth turkey hunt that's sponsered by the Gitchee Gumme Chapter of the NWTF. I guess they had a boy who couldn't make it and My boy was drawn as an alternative. The hunt takes place this weekend so I don't have a lot of time to get all the stuff ready. On the bright side he'll be hunting with a mentor so all the calling and set up stuff will be taken care of. I'll just be going along to watch, which is fine with me because I've never turkey hunted and have no idea what to do. I'm really excited for him and can't wait for this weekend. My kid doesn't even know yet. I didn't get the call until he had left for school. But I'm sure he'll be excited. I'll let you guys know how things go after the hunt on sunday afternoon or monday.

Wish us luck.

[Cooter]

Awesome - bet he won't be able to sleep when you tell him! Keep us posted.

[outdoor ran]

Thats great news Wally. I bet Jesse is very excited. Maybe he can teach me how to turkey hunt after this weekend . Something I've always wanted to do. Its great that Wi. has these programs for kids to get them involved. Wish I would of had these opportunities when I was his age. Tell J man good luck and hope to see some pics.

[wyldewal]

Sorry I took me so long to get this posted but it's a pretty good story.

Well lets start by saying that I'm going turkey hunting next year, we had a blast and learned a ton.

Saturday morning we got all the kids up at 4 for breackfast and we headed out to the blind at about 5 and were all set up by 5:30. After a long wait until daylight my sons mentor, Warren Sole, form the Gitchee gumee chapter of the NWTA started to do some calling. We couldn't get any birds to gobble back but we did hear a couple come out of the roost. That was about all the excitement we had for the morning. We drove around and checked for sign in a few other spot before lunch and didn't find much with all the rain. In the afternoon we decided t go back to the same spot as the morning, since we had birds in the area. We still couldn't get any gobbles and I think my son was starting to lose a little interest. He might have just been tired since he was up so early. He started to doze off, but so did the mentor. He was calling about every 20 minutes and napping in between so it was up to me to watch for anything. At about 4:30 I was shocked to see a big gobbler step out on to the trail about 25 yards from the blind. He never made a sound in the wet woods. I woke my son up first and then I woke up Mr.Sole. I thought the bird was dead but between not being awake all the way and a little bit of brush, the bird is still walking out there. That's OK he didn't fall asleep for the rest of the hunt. Sunday morning I thought he was going to get another chance. We had birds gobbling all around us But they would get about 75 yards away and turn around. They did that all morning. We ended up not getting anything except a great experience and a good education. I think my sons hooked on turkeys.

4 of the 15 kids did manage to harvest birds and including my son, 2 kids missed birds. All in all, it was a sucsessful hunt.

I want to thank all the members of the Gitchee Gummi chapter of the NWTA for giving the kids (and the parents ) this opportunity.

It was a great time.

[Cooter]

Awesome story, glad to see you guys got kids introduced to turkey hunting.

This 'kid' doesn't get to hunt for a couple more weeks!

[outdoor ran]

Wal, glad to hear the kid had a good time. I'm counting on him to show me how its done. I seen in the paper that they gave out 210 permits for that zone and ther were 1,300 that applied. I should be turkey hunting in about 7 years