As you may remember from earlier blogs about my sons, my middle son, Alex, who is 15 years old, loves and plays baseball. He is currently playing on the JV team and his time is consumed with baseball, friends, SportsCenter and sleeping. Pretty typical huh?

You may also remember that he has enjoyed going on hunts with me in the past but it has always been more about the “social” aspect of going on a road trip with Dad, and I think that’s pretty cool. Is Alex a hardcore hunter? Nada.

So you can imagine my surprise a couple of weeks ago when, on a Saturday night, Alex tells me he’d really like to go turkey hunting in the morning, before church. My response was, “I’m sorry son, we’ve got a bad connection. Say that again.” Harman, my oldest son who was within earshot, laughed out loud which in turn made Alex laugh.

“I’m serious,” said Alex. “Let’s go hunt in the morning.”

When I went to get Alex up the following morning at 5:30, I was totally unprepared for what happened next. HE GOT UP OUT OF THE BED!

We got dressed, left the house with Alex driving (another story for another day), swung through the McDonald’s drive-thru at his insistence, and with daylight breaking, drove 5 miles out of town, pulled off the highway, parked, got out of the truck still chewing my sausage biscuit and almost choked when the tom gobbled!

The turkey wasn’t 200 yards from the truck and he kept gobblin! Alex and I were fired up!

We set up on the turkey and had a blast listening to him gobble on the limb, heard him fly down and continue to gobble. We made a couple of moves on the turkey, being careful not to spook the bird. This was easier to accomplish since we did not have a camera or a cameraman with us. At this point in the hunt I was kind of kicking myself for not bringing a camera!

Finally, we changed position and I felt like the bird would come in. We set up on adjacent trees about 5 yards apart and I started calling. The gobbler was coming!

I whispered to Alex to get ready which he did by shouldering the Benelli and pointing it in the direction directly in front of us. The bird gobbled again and I knew we may have a dilemma. The tom was circling around to the right putting me directly in line with Alex and the approaching bird.

He gobbled again, I cut my eyes over to the right and there he was in full strut walking directly toward me. When he walked behind a big oak tree, I looked back at Alex who had not moved the gun at all (thank goodness).

Alex whispered, “I can kill him!” My response, “Don’t even think about it!”

Alex just smiled and we enjoyed the show as the bird continued to gobble as he strutted directly behind us. Eventually, the bird gave up and gobbled his way over the ridge. What an incredible morning! What a show!

Even Alex was fired up and we had a good laugh about me “messing up” his turkey hunt by getting in the way. We bagged no turkey, hence, the picture of Alex playing ball. Maybe next time!