My First Turkey

**Mike Bard** · #1 05-12-2008, 12:51 PM

Date: May 9, 2008

Location: Pennsylvania

Sunrise: 6:08 am

Weather: Partly Cloudy with occasional light showers

Temperature: 52 – 56 degrees

Wind: ENE 6-8 mph

Equipment Used: Avery® Field caps, Avery® Floating Gun Case, Avery® Ankle Gaiters, Avery® Finisher Blind Bag, and Avery® Fleece Calling Gloves.

Hunters: Zink Pro-Staffer Erik Nilsson and Avery® Pro-Staffers Mike Bard and David Rearick

Having dedicated my hunting efforts year round to waterfowl the past decade, I’ve never got into turkey hunting, but this year friend’s convinced me to give it a try. The first weekend here in NY, I had a real good hunt with my good friend, Rick Murphy, but we just weren’t able to seal the deal. It was a good time and I picked up several tips from Rick during our hunt.

Earlier this spring, Dave Rearick and Erik Nilsson invited me to come to PA for a turkey hunt and seeing they had both tagged out, I headed down after work on May 8th. I arrived late and we were getting up early, so Dave briefly described the area we’d be hunting and off to sleep I went.

The alarm clock went off at 3:45 and we were out the door a few minutes after 4 am. We set up on a hillside in some brush inside a pasture, using three hen decoys. We heard several gobbles while the birds were still on the roost from across the pasture. Shortly after sunrise, several jakes and hens flew down into the pasture. They established a couple groupings and began to mill around the pasture, slowly working their way towards us. After about an hour, we were surrounded with four jakes out in front of us and several others working their way up the hillside with their hens towards us. I picked out the largest jake in front and focused on him, awaiting him to come into range. Dave then heard a hen approaching us from the rear and thought she was going to blow our cover, so I peered over and noticed a tom with her, then noticed the four jakes out front had started a dead sprint right at us. Erik told me to swing on the tom, so I did, but shot over him in my haste. He, a second tom who was also coming up behind us, all the jakes and the hens scattered and I knew I had just blown the best chance I may ever get at a nice tom. I felt really bad because of all the work Dave and Erik had put into scouting and I was ready to call it quits for the day, but Erik gave me some line about how it happens and we had several more spots to try, so off we went to the next farm.

The second farm we went to already had turkeys in the field and Dave had mentioned that several hunters had been hunting here for the past three weeks, so these birds may be tough. We slide in on the backside of the field and cut down along the woods trying to get ahead of the birds. As we approached the corner of the first field, we met up with 3 toms who were about one hundred yards away, so we quickly hid on the edge of the woods and tried calling them in. All three were interested, but hung up about 60 yards out where the wheat was taller. We couldn’t get them to walk through the wheat and after a few minutes, they moved off into the next field down; however before we could move again, several jakes ran to the spot the toms had been strutting in and also began to strut and face off with each other. Like the toms, the jakes didn’t want to go though the taller wheat either and after a few minutes of not seeing a decoy and just hearing our calls, they followed the path of the toms into the next field.

At this point we decided to cut down into the woods and again tried to get in front of them. We went as far as we could, as fast as we could, then headed back up to the edge of a field where a steep hill in the field obstructed our view. Dave whispered to me to get set here and that I may only get to see their heads as they approached. No sooner did he say that, when the heads of the three toms popped up over the hill. Dave and Erik weren’t set yet and didn’t see them, but they saw us, as they’re heads all popped up even further. The lead bird then jumped into the air and without thinking, I immediately shot him. At 9:30 am on my first day hunting in PA, I had my first turkey and my PA turkey hunt was over. We had seen 19 toms or jakes this morning between the two farms we hunted. My first turkey weighed 21 pounds, had a 9.5 inch beard and 1 1/8 inch spurs. He scored 62.5 on the NWTF’s scoring system.

Photo by Dave Rearick

Photo by Dave Rearick

With almost two full days left in PA with my friends, we decided to visit Cabelas and do some trout fishing. Now that I’m hooked, I made good use of this unexpected visit to Cabelas and stocked up on some close out turkey supplies. Oddly, since I got my first bird, there has been far more talk of the bird I missed, than the bird I got, but I guess that’s just the way it goes with the friends I hunt with. Erik and Dave…Thanks!!!

Photo by Dave Rearick

**David Rearick** · #2 05-12-2008, 01:30 PM

Mike, it was really a great day to turkey hunt, regardless of the three blatant misses at close range. You made up for it on him though, he was one good longbeard, and you made a great shot.

Not too many days will you have 19 long beards and jakes with 125 yards on just 2 different farms. You picked a good day to travel down this way.