Outdoor Chenango Columnist Eric Davis with a youth hunter. Recently, the Youth Turkey Hunters took to the woods where ages 12-15. The youths also learned how to properly register and tag game, while accompanied by an adult licensed hunter. (Submitted photo)

Last weekend was the Youth Turkey Hunt, where only hunters from age 12-15 with turkey tags were allowed to carry firearms while accompanied by an adult licensed hunter.

This special weekend started in 2014, the year after I took Hunter Education as a 13-year old.

So, I participated in the first ever Youth Turkey Weekend as a youth hunter. Fast forward just over two decades and I have been participating in the Youth Turkey Weekend as an adult mentor for the past 7ish years.

If you recall from numerous previous articles, I have been mentoring a youth hunter named Timmy for the last few years. Last year Timmy shot his first turkey on the Youth Hunt with me and a friend. However, in the fall Timmy turned 16, making him too old for any of the special youth seasons. The good news for me though was that his younger brother Nathaniel turned 12 in January and wanted to start hunting. So, Nathaniel took the online Hunter Education course a few weeks ago and got his certificate. Then one Sunday, I took him to a shooting range where we covered handling firearms safely and he got to shoot my two turkey hunting shotguns, a .410 and a 20 gauge, set up with red for sights for easy aiming. After shooting both, he opted to use the .410 on the Youth Hunt. When we finished at the range, I helped create a list of what he needed to get before the Youth Hunt.

As the hunt approached, the weather forecast was calling for rain on Saturday. So I decided that I would like to put up a ground blind either Thursday or Friday after work. That way we would hopefully stay dry if it did rain and it would help conceal any movement from Nathaniel as a first time hunter.

I ended up going to the property we were going to hunt Friday evening, hoping I could hear a bird gobbling as he went to roost and I could quickly set my blind up somewhat close to him. While that did not happen, I did spot 4 turkeys flying up to roost at the bottom of a big green field. I assumed they were a group of hens.

So I decided to put the blind at the end of a hedgerow that separated that hay field from a corn field where the farmer had been spreading manure. As I walked away from the blind to go back to my truck, a turkey gobbled uphill into the woods. This meant we were between that bird and the group of turkeys I saw flew up.

Saturday morning we picked Nathaniel up at 4:45 and drove to our spot. We waited until it was just light enough to see where we were walking to avoid making too much noise with those turkey roosted somewhat nearby. We got in the blind and I set the decoys in the hay field directly in front of the blind. As it got lighter out, we heard the first gobble of the morning from quite a distance. However, more turkeys started to gobble at closer locations including one behind the barn at the bottom of the field. As time went on, this turkey started to get pretty fired up and eventually you could tell he was on the ground. I let out some yelps on my slate pot call and he gobbled back. As he continued to gobble, it sounded like he was getting closer. Finally, I spotted him come around the corner of the field below us.

He gobbled and started to strut but he was close to 175 yards away. Then he started to fast walk our direction once he spotted the decoys, but then he stopped at close to 100 yards. We noticed 3 hens had flown down and landed in the field to the left of him (where I saw the birds take off from on Friday). The tom stayed out of range and was trying to direct the hens to stay away from our decoys. The hens cut diagonally across the field and got into the corn field with the tom getting to roughly 55 yards.

It seemed like the hens would continue on that route and lead the tom off without Nathaniel getting a shot. However, once they were in the cornfield, they turned uphill and worked their way on the edge between the fields. Luckily I had thought ahead on Friday and set up the blind so Nathaniel could shoot out of a side window into the corn field so the window was already open. We were able to get him to spin in his seat. As the hens went through the sight of that window, the tom was just behind them. He seemed like he was under 30 yards so I told Nathaniel to shoot if he was comfortable. POW! The tom rolled over and barely even twitched.

After some excited high fives, we unloaded the shotgun and got out of the blind. I paced off the shot distance at 21 paces. The tom was a two-year old with a 9-inch beard and 3/4-inch spurs.

To top it off, we were able to pick everything up and get back to Nathaniel’s house before it started raining. Oh, and Saturday was my 36th birthday!