Monday, May 19, 2008

Making a lifelong friend through turkey hunting

Entry #2


© By Othmar Vohringer

Wild Turkey Fever reader Brian Keck from Boonville NY sent me the picture bellow showing him and his Cousins husband and hunting partner Dom with two nice Eastern wild turkeys the harvested on May 12th.


Here is the story of that particular hunt in Brian’s own words. Enjoy!

These birds were taken May 12th 2008 in Boonville NY by Me Brian Keck and my Cousin’s husband Dom Ventiquattro.
I am originally from upstate NY and now live in West Virginia. For two years Dom has left an open invitation for me to come to his home in Boonville to hunt turkeys. I was going to go last year but killed a bird in southern NY and opted to head back home early.

Well this year I decided to definitely go to Boonville. Dom and I really didn’t know each other to well other than meeting at the occasional family get together. I arrived at Dom’s house late Saturday night and the next morning we headed out to the farm he hunts and had birds gobbling all morning. After having some deer sniffing are decoys, we called in a Jake at around 9:00am and I took him with my Remington 870 super mag.

The next morning we headed back to the same spot, which is a hedge row on a hill side that overlooks two fields that are divided by a drainage ditch with scrub brush and a small stream. From the hedge row to the end of the second field is a good 400 to 450 yards across. Well after a fairly quiet morning of just seeing a couple hens come in and out of the fields, at around 9:30 we spotted 7 birds all the way across the second field. We were mixing up the calls yelping and clucking, I was switching between my HS strut diaphragm, a lynch box call and my Knight & hale old yeller with a wood wise wet stick striker. Those birds worked there way across that field, as they got closer we could see three gobbles and four hens.

The big tom took the lead as he was gobbling and strutting. The hens were yelping and clucking like crazy. When they arrived at the drainage ditch they milled around still strutting and gobbling but I was not sure that they were going to cross the stream. We started yelping and again the big guy took the lead across the water and the rest followed. Dom let out a few purrs and pulled those birds right in close, he let loose with his favorite double barrel 12 gauge on the big tom, after his shot rang out there were birds running every where, one of the jakes stopped about 25 yards out and I put him down as well. That was by far the most fun and most exciting turkey hunt I had ever been on and I will be going back to Boonville for years to come. But the best thing of it all is that I made a very good friend and a life long hunting buddy in Dom. You couldn’t ask for a better guy, he mad me feel like we had been friends all our lives. Thanks Dom.

What I especially like in this story is how Brian Keck explains the different calls and calling sequences they used to lure the turkeys into their set up. This illustrates an important point I always stress in my seminars. In order to sound natural it is imperative to mix your calling up and use different calls. Especially on hard hunted birds. This is often all the difference needed to be successful. Sounding like a flock of turkeys always will get the resident birds fired up to investigate.

There is still time to take part in this contest and win a top quality Heirloom turkey call. For more information on how to take part click here! But hurry up it all ends on May 31, 2008.

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