Opening morning of any fish or game season is a time of high expectation. All that fantasizing, reminiscing, and planning tends to get the juices flowing. When the opening day requires you to drive 15 hours south, the level of expectation gets ramped up even more. That's one reason I get so jacked up about wild turkey hunting.
Yet explaining the allure of sitting under a tree, or in a blind, trying to call in an old gobbler, is hard to do to the uninitiated or non-hunter. It defies logic. The 4 am wake-up calls. The trudge through muddy fields in the dark. The sore bums from sitting on Hawthorne. Yet when you first hear the thunderous rattle of a big tom answering a hen call, and see that red and white head coming through the trees, I defy a hunter to not be pumped. It's just not possible. Most of my turkey hunts have been done from the ground, and generally while sitting under a tree. That's old school. On this hunt, however, I'd decided to try a ground blind. It was a good call.
So as the sun was coming up over the field I was sitting in a blind north of Kincardine, feeling expectant. It was drizzling, but that didn't dampen my enthusiasm. I put my two Avian x decoys out then snuck back to my blind and put a mouth call in. I then made a couple of hen clucks.
Chuck, chuck! The hen calls echoed over the field. Gobble, gobble!