-By Rich Miller
Rain, rain, rain. For the past three years it has been a nasty rainy day for the opening day of turkey season. Tuesday night on the eve of the opener the forecast was looking no different. When I went to bed on Tuesday night they were calling for a heavy rain until sometime after noon. With the season opening on Wednesday I didn’t want to burn a vacation day if it was going to be raining all day. When I take a day off of work I like to make the most of it as far as hunting goes. I got up at 5:30 a.m. to make my decision on what to do. When the radar popped up on the screen it was green, dark green, orange, and red which wasn’t looking good for the home team. So I decided to go on into work and try to do a little hunting that afternoon if the weather improved.
By the time I got back home and got my stuff together it was after four o’clock and the sun had started to pop out. My dad and I always hunt on opening day together so we put up a blind in a food plot where we knew birds used on a regular basis. Once we got in the blind we hadn’t been there five minutes when five jakes came in to the turkey decoys and hung around trying to figure out how to get Peeping Tom away from Henny Penny so they could move in on her. It is a good thing that gobblers don’t react to calling the way these Jakes did or there wouldn’t be any turkeys left. After a while they got tired of not getting anywhere with Henny Penny and left. Somewhere around five we heard a turkey gobble on the backside of the food plot. A few minutes later we saw a bird come out of the woods about a hundred yards away. Then there were a few more birds that came out behind him. Once the first bird saw the decoys he came on a dead run and ran straight up to Peeping Tom. This bird was acting crazy and running back and forth toward the decoy but the other birds still hadn’t arrived on the scene yet.
Once the other birds got there they seemed to calm down and presented me with a good shot. With all of the bird’s attention focused on the decoys it gave me a chance to get my bow drawn. Once I got my pin settled on the first gobbler I sent a razor sharp G5 Tekan through both wings. The other three birds stood around wondering what happened. This gave my dad a chance to get the bead of his shotgun on another bird and get his first turkey of the year. Once the smoke cleared we had our two birds and there were plenty of high fives and smiles all the way around. Opening day of turkey season is a ritual that we plan for every year. Our annual hunt usually takes place on opening morning but with the rain it turned out to be an evening hunt this year but the results couldn’t have been any better.
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