Successful Pa Youth Hunt

**5SHOT** · 04-28-2008, 10:01 PM

Well my son had another successfull hunt last Saturday. This was only his second hunt and he has now shot two nice longbeards in two years. I am constantly reminding him that this is not normal and reality will strike very soon.

April 19th was Pa's Youth hunt and you couldn't ask for a better morning weather wise. It was around 50 degrees and with clear skies and a full moon. We got to our tree around 5am. The light was breaking and there was no gobbling yet. I was getting a little nervous. The last time I scouted our spot I heard alot of gobbling by now. I was just about to give it a soft tree yelp but before I can get one out a turkey gobbled about 50 yards directly in front of us! Music to my ears. He gobbled about 4 more times with no other sounds. I was alittle surprised there were no hens yelping. There is always hens here. It was getting pretty light so I was anticipating a fly down soon. I wanted to call but I felt we were too close to the roosted gobbler. If he didn't see the hen yelping I thought he might not fly to us so I let nature take it course and boy did it get exciting. The gobbler let out another gobble but this time a chain reaction of 4 gobbles followed all directly in front of us. My son who was sitting in my lap said "WOW did you hear that"! This happen one more time. The original longbeard gobbled and the chain of gobbles preceded. Now is when all heck broke loose. The original boy flew directly down about 40 yards out and 4 more LONGBEARDS all fly into gun range. There are 2 strutting to our right about 20 yards but there is some trees and low brush partially breaking there view and three strutting almost directly in front of us. My son whispers which one should I shoot? I told him the one directly in front of him but I told him not to shoot him while he is in full strut. I was just about to give it a call on my mouth call to get him out of his strut and he let out a gobble and my son shot while he had his head stretched out gobbling. I didn't expect that but it worked. He went right down! He was using a 20ga Mossberg Bantam 500 with Remington Heavy Shot #5's. Shot him at 36 yards!

The bird was a nice two year old with 7/8 inch spurs and a nice thick 9 inch beard. Here are some pictures: