Youth hunter Timmy Barnett with his first turkey that he shot on Sunday. (Submitted photo)

This past weekend was special for a couple of reasons. First, it started Friday as I turned 35 and helped with Safety Day for the Chenango County Youth Turkey Hunt.

We had a lighter crew this year with only three hunters able to make it and a fourth having varsity baseball obligations. Anyway, the hunters got a Turkey Hunting 101 style presentation before we took a break for some pizza. After eating, the hunters and mentors headed to the range where each hunter fired at least one shotgun round at a turkey target to demonstrate safe firearms handling. After everyone had shot, hunters and mentors headed home in anticipation of the next two mornings.

My youth hunter, Timmy (who you might remember from our Youth Deer Hunt and Opening Day hunts) could only hunt on Sunday as he was the varsity baseball player and his team was in a tournament on Saturday.

Therefore, Saturday evening I attended the Otsego County Limb Hangers NWTF chapter fundraising banquet in Edmeston. The event was fun, I walked away with a turkey fryer and a soft cooler bag, but it ran a little later than I thought it would. I got home at 10:05.

Sunday morning, my alarm went off at 3:30 and I got out of bed. I showered and looked at the weather forecast. It was chilly so I put on some merino wool base layers underneath my usual turkey pants and shirt. I met Josh, my co-mentor, in Oxford at 4:30 before heading to Timmy’s house. Timmy wanted to hunt on the property right next to their house and had gotten permission from the owner the week before. So we picked Timmy up and drove a few hundred yards down the road to a tractor pull-off going up into some fields. It was misting a tiny bit and was pretty dark so we waited in the truck a few minutes before heading up onto the property. As we walked, I let them know that I was looking forward to taking a nap in a little while in the woods or that Timmy would just shoot a bird at 6:06 and we can go home early.

We walked to the top corner of a field that was used to grow corn last year and picked a few trees to sit at. Josh got Timmy set on one tree and trimmed some branches to get him some shooting lanes, while I took 20 paces and set up a hen and jake decoy in the field. Josh sat at a tree a couple yard away and I sat at the same tree as Timmy.

After a few minutes, the first gobble of the morning was let out a few hundred yards away. The birds were not fired up on this windy and chilly morning. However, we heard another turkey gobble probably as far away as he could be while being able to have us hear him. Again, the first bird gobbled and this time it sounded like there was a second bird with it. After a few minutes, I let out some yelps on my diaphragm call and Josh followed me to sound like a couple of hens. The closer turkeys gobbled after a couple of seconds. I waited until it was definitely light enough for the turkey to be flying down before I yelped and then did a fly-down cackle.

The toms gobbled immediately. A few seconds later they gobbled again and sounded slightly closer that they had been. I pulled up my binoculars and scanned the bottom of the field we were in and saw two turkeys about 200 yards away. I whispered to Timmy and Josh that I could see two turkeys but couldn’t tell if they were hens or toms. After a couple seconds, I lost sight of them in the topography of the field. We called again and they gobbled right away. Another glimpse through my binoculars let me see two turkeys walking uphill to us a little over 100 yards away. They gobbled on their own and as I started to raise my binos, I realized I could see one of them with my eyes. “60 yards,” I whispered so Josh knew and I had Timmy take the safety off on his shotgun. As the tom got to about 40 yards, I could see the second tom only a few steps behind and as they walked up to the Jake decoy, I could see they both had long beards. After an excruciating 4 or 5 minutes of watching the two toms beat the snot out of my decoy, they finally separated enough for Timmy to get a shot that would result in only one of the toms being hit. Timmy shot and the tom fell to the ground. The second tom stood there, staring at his counterpart trying to figure out what happened and what to do. We sat still hoping the second tom would walk away on his own. After a minute, I looked at my watch, it was 6:07. I looked at Josh and said, “It’s 6:07, so I think Timmy shot that bird at 6:06, just like I called it!” After another minute or two, we decided to stand up and go get Timmy’s bird and spooked the second tom out of the field.

Timmy’s first turkey weighed 19.5 pounds, had roughly a 10-inch beard and had 3/4 inch spurs. All four of the youth hunters shot turkeys, with two birds shot each day of the weekend.