Katelyn’s first morning hunt!
Katelyn has been talking about turkey hunting for months! She enjoyed our evening hunt before and this time wanted to get up early with Papa and I. So I thought I had a strut zone figured out that was nice and close to the road where we wouldn’t have to walk far and from my experience it seemed like the birds were hitting this spot by 8am at the latest. The only fear I had was if a bird was roosting in the group of trees right by the road. So the night before I tucked her into bed with the plans of waking her up at 5am and then picking up Papa by 5:30am. This is a full hour later than we had been getting setup but I wanted her to hear the birds on the roost but not get her up so early that she couldn’t function. We arrived at our spot and Birds were roosted all over the place and unfortunately, there was a bird in the trees by the road. Knowing we were probably gonna spook this bird I had hoped it wasn’t the one(s) that were hitting the spot I wanted us to sit. Well, as soon as the birds hit the ground SILENCE. Katelyn did really good playing with the video camera, eating every snack that I had brought and even worked on drawing her letters on the iPad. The only animal we saw was was a rooster pheasant that came out to feed. Katelyn got a kick at how fast he was as he ran from corn cob to corn cob across the field. Even as we started to realize our hunt was over I turned Katelyn loose on her slate call. Sounds even better than me! I think next time I give her freedom to call at those pesky birds on the roost. To test her calling as we dropped dad off we snuck over to our turkeys and she got them all worked up. She got a kick out of them answering her calling! Sure wish a wild tom had come in… Always next time!