Let's hear some funny turkey hunt storys

[Duster]

It's been a while since I posted up about this and with several new turkey hunters on board lets do this again.

This story starts out at a Indiana Fish & Wildlife area up north. All hunting was allowed by draw, they held a drawing for hunting days a few weeks before the season came in. Some hunt's were three day and some two day's. This was only the third or forth year turkey hunting was allowed on this property. Turkeys had been stocked there a few years before and the flock had grown enough to allow limited hunting.

You could show up at 4:30 am for a no show drawing and most days one or more slots were open for various reasons. I arranged my work schedule to a afternoon shift during turkey season and made the 50 mile drive to try and hunt when I could. I had been unsucessful on the regular drawing so this no show drawing would be my only chance to hunt turkeys.

Even if the guys there didn't get lucky, and most days there was 8 to 12 guys looking to fill those empty slots, those who didn't get in would drive to parking lots just to hear the sound of tom's greeting the new day.

There was a tom in one area that several guys hunted hard with no success. He would sound off every morning from the same area about a quarter mile off one of the parking lots and by doing that drew a lot of attention from both hunters and stand around guys. I made up my mind that if I got lucky I was going to hunt this bird and none other.

Now came my lucky day, I drew in on a no show. Headed straight to that parking lot, got my gear together and a sure fired plan in my head on how to harvest this bird. I did the walk towards his roost area trying my best to sound like a deer walking. Step...Pause...step..pause till I got to the ridge I was sure his roost was on. I did this by moonlight and it took a while. Eased a single decoy out and stuck it at about 20 yards then found me a nice size tree to set against. Just as the sun started up a thunder of a gobble sounded...man that was close... then another and a lot of wing noise and this tom fell out of the tree I was sitting against and landed almost on my feet, his attention was directed at the decoy. Heck of a place to set up under his roost and not know it.

Just one more little part to the story..that morning I was in a hurry and instead of putting in contacts I just put on glasses. As this tom strutted less than 10 ft away there I sit frozen except my glasses which had began to fog bad. May have been my heavy breathing...:D...this bird did his best to make friends with the decoy for several minutes all the time I was sitting there blind as can be due to the fogged glasses. I took it as long as I could then laughed out loud at my situtation. The tom didn't care for that and left the area at a dead run.

I never drew in for the rest of the season and as far as I know that bird died of old age.

[keith meador]

several years ago on the turkey opener i rolled up to the farm i was hunting a few minutes early. i had enough time to chug a cup of coffee and eat a few donuts. i have this little problem with coffee, it acts as a laxative with me. shortly after the coffee consumption, came the urge to purge....

i rolled out of the truck and took care of business. i did not have any toilet paper, but did have an old headnet stuck in the door of my truck....as any good hunter would do, i used what i had available. i went ahead and hunted with no luck and went home.....

the next day i ran into the property owner who was also hunting. i ran into him around 1030. as he approached he asked if i had lost a headnet......that's when i realized the one he was wearing was the one i had "discarded" the day before......i looked him straight in the eye and replied with "nope"....

[Mepperson]

several years ago on the turkey opener i rolled up to the farm i was hunting a few minutes early. i had enough time to chug a cup of coffee and eat a few donuts. i have this little problem with coffee, it acts as a laxative with me. shortly after the coffee consumption, came the urge to purge....

i rolled out of the truck and took care of business. i did not have any toilet paper, but did have an old headnet stuck in the door of my truck....as any good hunter would do, i used what i had available. i went ahead and hunted with no luck and went home.....

the next day i ran into the property owner who was also hunting. i ran into him around 1030. as he approached he asked if i had lost a headnet......that's when i realized the one he was wearing was the one i had "discarded" the day before......i looked him straight in the eye and replied with "nope"....

You are too nice, I would have had to drop the bomb on him "so to speak".

[jeff-ward]

Wel this is kinda funny, last season i was working a big ole boy that seemed to put the slip on me every day for a week, then on the last day of the season i had him working hard he was coming in for sure ,he was just over a rise at about 30yds, when i heard something to my left( im 90% deaf in that ear) so i knew it was close so i eased my head around and was staring face to face with a bobcat so close i couldnt see anything but his face..so i quickly turned and pointed my encore turkey barrel at him and told him GET OUT OF HERE at this point he was only 2 feet away thats when he let out that blood curtaling scream and all of his muscles tinsed up and he was going to jump on me so i had to shoot,i had to , all i kept thinking was i dont want to shoot and ruin the gobbler i had been working on everyday.... but i knew with everything in me if i didnt i would have had to fight that thing and it was way too early in the morning for that.. i aimed at his head only 3 inches away from my muzzle and fired the shot hit him in the neck putting a 2 inch hole through his neck...
then after that it hit me on how close i came to being seriosly injured and sat there shaking like a staring at the bobcat laying there...so i laid the gun down and lit up a cig. and looked over to where the gobbler had been and there he stood 30yds away just looking at me(could not belive he was standing there) and my gun on the ground without a shell in it..he didnt hang around long enough for me to pick up the gun and reload so he got away...
just so everyone knows i went and called the game warden and expained to him what had happened (because i knew it wasnt legal to kill a bobcat this time of year) but one look at the cat tells the story on how close and how i felt threatened..
any way like i said not really funny but kinda because the cat thought he was gonna get breakfast and i thought i was gonna get that ole gobbler and neither one of us got what we thought we would.....

[Tha' Hat]

One morning several years ago, Tha' Purse and I were setup on the edge of a small, picked beanfield late in the season. We weren't married at the time, still in college, and she had yet to take her first turkey at the time.

There were several birds that had been roosting in this area. I'd tagged out near the field, dipping into the same population of birds earlier in the season, so they were getting a little call shy. But, they were flying down into this little field most every morning, so we'd setup with a decoy in place about 15 yards in front of us with plans for an ambush.

I have a built-in chair in my turkey vest, and since there wasn't a good tree to sit against, I was leaning back against that and Tha' Purse was sitting between my knees with my lightweight NWTF special edition 870. That was a heck of a turkey gun -- very lightweight, threw an awesome pattern and had a fine set of fiber optic sights. Trouble was, even though it was just a 3-inch gun, it kicked as hard as any shotgun I've ever fired. Its short barrel (22 inches or a little less if I'm not mistaken) was prone to flipping up pretty quick if you didn't have ahold of it. Tha' Purse had done some practicing with dove loads out of it, though, so all seemed well.

Well, right at daylight, I glanced across the field and spied a coyote trotting across, making his morning rounds. For some reason, thoughts of turkeys were temporarily put aside. I asked Tha' Purse if'n she'd like to shoot a coyote, and she said "Yes." I sucked air across my teeth, making a mouse-squeak sound. The coyote didn't hesitate -- it simply charged.

Unbeknowngst to me, Tha' Purse didn't have the gun on her shoulder, ready for the critter. And since she'd never seen a coyote called in, it freaked her out a little, especially when the dog totally bypassed our turkey decoy and began closing the distance to single-digit yardage, still at a dead run.

"Shoot it!" I yelled. The shotgun roared, I saw the barrel fly into the air. I swear the coyote got bug-eyed as he turned tail to leave the field, unscathed. Turkeys flew everywhere from the trees, cackling and flapping.

"Oh my God! I shot myself in the face!" Tha' Purse screamed. She hadn't, in fact, but she had fired a magnum turkey gun one handed from the hip at the oncoming 'yote. The fiber-optic back sight whacked her squarely under the right eye.

I jumped up, grabbed the gun, racked in a new shell and tried to get on the dog as he scrambled away, but he was just too far. I held my fire and attempted to curtail my chuckles as I examined Tha' Purse's black eye.

[bcdh1]

Well, I have one of the best no doubt. I was hunting with one of my best friends and he always gets first shot. Well, he always promises we will stay until i get one. Well, we go and have one come in he could have shot, but said it was too far, like 30 yards, but we end up killing one. So i get in the hot seat. We had two blinds on opposite sides of a fence. Well, like 30 minutes after that he wispers through one of the windows saying he is ready to go. I was like, you said i could kill one before we left. So he was like okay and gave me some more time. Well, i fall asleep like 10 minutes later for a short nap and wake up to find me sitting on the edge of a fence row. My pop-up blind was packed in the bag, my turkey calls in the vest laying next to me, the cooler was loaded and my gun ha been unloaded. All i hear next is him saying "You ready to go?"

[Pollcat]

Another....One spring day a good friend and I were chasing gobblers around the west Ky country side. As it turns out I shot a BIG gobbler at a distance I wouldn't recommend shooting. As I walk to the downed bird I see him squatted in the tall grass with his head laid back against his body and looking up at me. I reach down and grab him by the neck...bad mistake! Little did I know it but that sucker was planning an attack. As soon as I grabbed him he began kicking my butt. I had wings hitting me in the face, feet kicking me in the chest, and spurs ripping my shirt. We hit the ground and rolled around for a few seconds until I felt him tap out. I stood up and my friend and I walked back to his truck to head to another part of the farm in hopes to get him a turkey. I opted to put the turkey in the front passengers side floor board of his truck because the bird is still making a few flops and kicks every now and them and I didn't want him to flop out of the back of the truck going down the road. During the ride in the truck I realize I'm bleeding. I have a 6" slice in the top of my right arm, and a 2" slice on the bottom of my right arm from the battle that had just taken place. My good friend is laughing at me as I'm mending my wounds. That's when I realize the turkey is looking up at me again with those same cold eyes he had just before he opened up a can of whoop-a$$ on me. I imediately put my feet against him and held him to the floor. I reached in my pocket to get my knife....no knife. I asked my friend for his knife, he didn't have a knife either. We argued for a few moments about why each of us didn't have a knife with us. He began to tear his truck apart looking for a knife while driving down the road at 50mph. He finally looks at me and says, "here try these" and hands me a pair of scissors. I was floored!!! They weren't even real scissors, they were the round tipped kindergarden scissors. Against my better judgement I began to whittle on the old gobblers neck until he appeared to have gone to turkey heaven. Shortly after we arrived at the other side of his farm and left the truck. We entered the woods and chose to set-up in an area where the gobblers normally roost. We hunted until dark and began walking back to the truck. As we walked closer to the truck we noticed his tail lights were lit. I said, "you dummy, you left your lights on". He assured me he hadn't had his lights on as it was daylight when we drove there. When we got to the truck we found out it was the turkey who had his brake lights lit. The turkey was sitting on his brake peddle and was still very much alive. My friend slowly opened the drivers door and I eased in behind him, pointed my shot gun (which was unloaded though he didn't know) at the turkey and said " look out I got'em". He starts yelling, no..no..you can't shoot in there, I've got a transmission down there. We imediately began another search for a knife which brought up nothing but a big rusty old toolbox knife. My friend says, I'll stick him with this. He moves in for the attack, then stops. He looks up at me and says,"He's going to peck me". I busted out laughing and assured him it wouldn't hurt. He says, "tell me somthing genius, when turkeys fight they spur and peck....why would they waste their time pecking if it didn't hurt". By this time I'm doubled over holding my side from laughing so dang hard. He tells me to grab his head and he would stick him. There against my better judgment I move in to grag his neck and the turkey begins jumping around. I realized I was about to be stabbed by the dullest, rustiest knife known to man....and I soon released the birds head. By this time my friend had lost his patience and took matters into his own hands. He grabbed the turkey by the feet, yanked him out of the truck and began "wind milling" the turkey into the side of his truck, a nearby tree, and a fence post. He finally stops his tazmanian devil routine and falls to the ground and looks up at me with his head still spinning and says,"is he dead yet". Finally the old monarch had gone to that big strut zone in the sky. There were soo many feathers on the ground, it looked like the county road crew had hit him with a bush hog. As we gathered up what was left of my turkey and the rest of our gear and got into the truck I noticed feathers in the seats,on the dash, in the back seat, in the visors....ect. I began to clean all the feathers out of his truck and listen to his lecture about my poor shooting ability when he yells, "look at this crap....that sucker took a big dump in my seat"! When I looked over the seat there laid a pile of turkey poop the size of a McD's quarter pounder. I nearly fell out of the truck laughing. While cleaning out his truck we wondered how two veteran turkey hunters could pull such a juvenile stunt and how many passing motorists had seen the turkey standing on his steering wheel.

[Duster]

We darn sure have a winner in that one. I could picture that in my mind as I read every word....:D