TURKEY CHALLENGE

Calling In The Hung-Up Turkey

EDITOR'S NOTE: There have been times in my hunting career when I've had to fight my natural urge to take a turkey so that I could learn important lessons about turkey hunting. But, on no hunt was my patience tested more than when I hunted with Allen Jenkins, president of Lynch Calls. Jenkins learned to hunt turkeys from an old master during the days when few people even knew what a wild turkey looked like, much less how to call and hunt one.

I had a hard time believing what I was hearing. The turkey continued to gobble as he walked around the ditch, through the woods and toward the point on the far side of the field. "Better get your gun up, John," Brown instructed while grinning from ear to ear. "The turkey will be here in just a minute."

And just as though he had read the script, the longbeard walked out on the opposite side of the field strutting and drumming while moving straight toward us. When the gobbler was 50 yards away, Jenkins cackled to the turkey. The tom blew up like a toad frog -- strutting and gobbling all the way. When the bird was at 40 yards, Jenkins asked me, "Do you want to shoot him?" But I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The mature turkey that we had been calling to for an hour and 45 minutes had a fine 9- to 10-inch beard, and my host was asking me if I wanted to shoot the turkey.

Trying hard not to be rude, I asked Jenkins, "Do you want me to shoot him?" I couldn't believe that I had really asked that question. Jenkins assured me that while the turkey had a real nice beard and was a big bird, "From looking at his spurs, I think he is only a two-year old. But take him if you want to."

"I must have lost my mind," I thought. "There's a turkey strutting and gobbling at 30 yards that we have called to for almost two hours, and now we are discussing whether or not to shoot."

"What do you want me to do?" I questioned. "Gobble, gobble, gobble", the turkey retorted. "We may be able to find an older bird close to another field", Brown whispered.

"No, let's let John go ahead and take this one," Jenkins suggested. "If we find another bird, we will call the gobbler up and let John look at him. Okay, John, take the bird."

When the turkey dropped strut and craned his neck up, I squeezed the trigger on my 3-inch magnum Remington SP. The turkey went down, and I raced across the ground to cover the tom just in case he decided to get up.

"That's the first time I've ever seen a fellow jump on a turkey and pick him up in less than a minute after he shot the bird," Brown observed as he and Jenkins approached the downed bird and myself.

The gobbler weighed 19 pounds and had a 10-inch beard. But downing the bird was not the end of the hunt nor the end of what I would learn from Allen Jenkins, president of Lynch Turkey Call Company, and J.C. Brown, one of the company's key men. During the next two days, we called up six more gobblers to within gun range but never fired a shot.

TOMORROW: PLAY FAIRLY