(P) Turkey hunting with the kido's!

I finally had the opportunity to take Ryder and Ashlynn turkey hunting today. They wanted to wake up in the morning and be in the ground blind by day break. I had been up late the night before completing water rescue night drills until midnight. So the last thing I wanted to do was wake up at 4 am. My plan was to sleep in until 7 and try to be in the ground blind by 9am. Ashlynn had other ideas though and proved to be more motivated than I was. I heard my bedroom door open at exactly 4am. It was Ashlynn asking if I was ready to get up and go turkey hunting. I was shocked! I asked her how she happened to wake up at exactly 4 am. She replied, " I don't know, I just knew it was time." I managed to talk her into another hour of sleep but that was it. Ashlynn and I woke Ryder up at 5 (with no problems by the way) and drove down to the farm.

We arrived in the ground blind shortly after daybreak. We sat in the ground blind for about an hour and a half with no sightings of a turkey. We were hunting on the point of a clover field where I often see turkeys around 9 am. I had a Primos decoy out (Killer B) with a string tied to the tail of the pretend Tom. The kids had a great time making the decoy move in different directions. While they were making the decoy dance, I started to fall asleep. All of a sudden the kids woke me up saying that there were lots of turkeys in the field. I thought they were playing off of their imagination but when I opened my eyes I saw approximately 15 birds headed our way. In the group were 3 Toms. Unfortunately when the first hen saw our decoy she turned and walked away from us. All the other birds followed giving us no shot with the bow. My calls brought no interest to the Toms that were secure with their group of hens.

We decided to take a break mid-day and helped my Dad work on our farming equipment. Around 4:30 we headed back out to the woods and set the ground blind up in a natural travel route that the turkeys use to get to a nightly roosting sight. I decided not to use the decoy this time so I didn't scare away any hens that may have a trailing Tom. The afternoon was filled with excitement. I called in over 15 hens from every direction, sometimes 4 at a time. However, we did not see our first Tom until about 20 minutes before dark. For some reason most of the Toms stayed just out of shooting range as they headed for another group of hens that were located about 80 yards away from us. I only had one shot opportunity at a very large Tom. He actually came in behind us and caught us by surprise. I had to reposition the kids in the ground blind to get the shot off before he was out of range and I rushed my shot. I shot too low and missed out on the opportunity. Truth be told, I was a little too excited which also could have played a role in my poor shot. I was very disappointed not to be successful with the kids but they didn't seem to mind much. In fact, on the drive home that night they said, "Dad, this will be one of the best days we ever had." The day was obviously a success even without the thunder chicken!