Jon's Never Ending Odyssey: Guided by the Protégé

It has now come full circle. The padawan has learned well. The third weekend in April I was able to get back to the woods. Michael had spent all of Friday trying to find birds for me. I had a second season tag and he had a full season bow tag. Friday evening he was even able to put a few birds on the roost for morning at one of the larger tracts of public land in the area. We planned an EARLY morning start as it was the first weekend available in the state for a gun season and we expected company on this expansive public. Michael insisted we be to the spot by the latest of 3:30am....

I should have smothered the kid....

We got to our spot and there was not a vehicle in site! We never actually saw another person out there. It was rather pleasant.

We waited for enough time to pass before we headed for the roost site. We got close and came to a slow crawl. We inched our way into what we thought was a gobbler bedroom before we carefully and quietly set our decoys and got into our positions.

Nothing.

Not.
A.
Peep.

Michael was beside himself. I have taught him everything I know and he was trying to guide me onto a bird. He was hoping for a better start to the morning. I suggested we move and he knew that birds roost on a prominent cottonwood point on the river.
We walked another 300 yards, keeping ourselves within shooting range of the river's edge, and then set up again.
Michael and I sat there and soaked in the morning. A few distance gobbles. A couple of other successful hunters momentarily silencing the woods with their gun blasts. The cardinals. The geese. The smells. This was the kind of morning I had been day-dreaming about since November.

Gobble. And exactly where Michael said it would be.

About 100 yards out in the cottonwood finger we heard this magnificent beast sing his spring-time song.
He gobbled a few times more over the course an hour being taunted by a few clucks and purrs from my slate call and each time sounding a little closer.
On his last gobble I readied the gun and told Michael this guy was making his way towards us, intentional or not.
Twenty minutes later I hear Michael, "There's a turkey right in front of us."
"What!?" is all I could blurt out.
"it's right in front of us... 3 o' clock... It's a longbeard!"
A great big gobbler was making his way straight at us. He was taking his sweet time as any public land gobbler does to survive. He would take a step and pause to look. Step, pause, look. Repeat.
At 40 yards he stretched his neck and caught sight of our decoys. He went into full strut and then gobbled. This entire time Michael and I are bantering back and forth. We were trying to figure out whom should shoot. We wanted to see him get into the decoys and give us a show, but he was a wary bird that had seen a few set-ups already. He came to a spot that was partially open in the downed branch that was shielding us from his direct view. I merely clicked off the safety on my gun and he caught it. Full alert. For a full two minutes he stood at high alert. Michael was shaking so bad his arrow was bouncing on the end of his bow. I was shaking so bad the end of my barrel was bouncing around as well. I finally craned his neck back and came out of alert. His full head and neck gave me an opening.

BOOM!

Before I could even think I was on top of him. Michael hadn't even gotten upright before I was able to get to him. He didn't even flop. Thank you Hevi-Shot.

Michael had successfully guided me onto a big beautiful gobbler. We doubled on jakes last year, but we were both looking for a mature bird this year. We had hunted Big Marsh for turkeys for many years and this was the first time we were able to put one on the ground. It turned out to be a spectacularly colored Eastern turkey.