It was 7:00 pm and my son Sean was calling me on the radio every hour or so letting me know he hadn’t seen or heard a turkey yet. Other than a lunch break at noon we had been sitting all day. This was the first year Wisconsin’s turkey season was open until sunset and it made for a long day. Closing was 7:52pm and it was slowly approaching that time.

We were both sitting five yards or so into the woods bordering strutting and feeding zones we had seen turkey’s in before. Sean was watching an alfalfa field on one side of the farm and I was watching one on the other side.

Now for the fun part. We had the first week of the 2007 season and yes it was snowing. Not just a flake or two but an all out blizzard. We woke up on Wednesday morning and found two or three inches of snow on the ground along with cold temperatures and howling winds. All I could think of was the turkey’s roosting all day. I tried to be optimistic and assured my son Sean the birds would still be feeding even if they gobbled very little.

As closing time approached I didn’t hear one gobble. At 7:15pm I called Sean and he told me he was going to head to the truck soon. I decided to pack up and take a walk. My plan was to get to the roost area and make some call’s trying to see wear the birds wanted to hold up for the night.

I was about halfway up a steep hill and found a tree to lean against to make a couple calls. I always stand next to a tree when I stop to make a call in case I have to get down in a hurry. I made a standard yelp call with my diaphragm mouth call and heard the same yelp reply. I immediately thought it was another hunter. I called Sean and told him I was going to go up the hill and see who was hunting this farm. The farmer that gave us permission to hunt never mentioned any other hunters.

As I approached the top of the hill I called again. This time nothing. "Now why would a hunter make just a couple of yelps and than quit" I wondered. I looked down the hill toward my truck where I was going to go and try and roost some birds but something kept calling me up another hill. Not to the area I had heard the yelp but at the top of a hill next to a field that my oldest son Cory and I had shot a double some years back. Cory couldn’t hunt with us this year because of his commitment to the Navy.

After sitting in a snow storm all day I really didn’t want to climb the hill with only about thirty minutes left until close, but something told me to go up there. I followed my intuition and started the climb.

I stopped about fifty yards from the field. The wind was brutally biting at my face and the snow had now turned to ice pellets. They felt like needles sticking in my exposed skin. I squinted my eyes as I struggled to see into the field. I used binoculars to glass the field and saw nothing.

I made a series of excited yelps and listened closely. The wind made it almost impossible to hear. Than Sean called me on the radio to tell me he heard a gobble. "It sounds like its up by you Dad" he said. "I didn’t hear anything" I replied. I made another excited yelp call and there it was. A muffled half gobble sounding like a Jake quietly made it through the wind. It was quite but sounded close. Than I let him have it. I blurted out a loud "come hear type cut and some clucks". Than I saw them, not close like I thought but some two hundred yards into the field. With fifteen or twenty minutes left I thought there would be a slim to nil chance in getting a flock of some thirty birds into the woods. Not only trying to get the Toms away from the hens but also get them out of a field they want to feed in. They wanted the manure that was spread days earlier in the field.

I made a series of yelps and what appeared to be the boss hen yelped back. She must have been the hen that yelped earlier from the other hill. The birds must have slowly fed around the field to this spot. Another series of yelps and she yelped back but the flock wasn’t moving. I was running out of time and better think of something quick. She was interested, but really just telling me where she was.

Every hunter has been in a situation like this and I had it happen several times. Only one thing to do. Call the hen. Forget about the lonely seductive calling and soft purring. You need to send a spark through that hen and into the flock. They need to stop feeding, look over hear and wonder what the heck is going on over there. You need to make that boss hen want to kick your butt and the Toms think, "I gotta have some of that". She had been chasing the younger birds and even some Toms around in the field and I had a feeling she was pretty spunky.

So I started my gasping for air style of cutting and clucking like a mad man not stopping for two or three minutes. This technique is just short of alarm putting or a fighting purr type calling and should only be done if nothing else works, or your running out of time. I prayed Sean didn’t call me on the radio and tell me it was quitting time as I blasted off another series.

The hen let out a loud board snapping series of clucks and I knew she was mine. But would the rest of the flock follow? As she approached the edge of the woods most of the Toms followed the back of the flock in full strutt. Not a Tom dared to let out a gobble and I think they only came along to see the old lady whip some butt. Every guy loves a girl fight.

As she entered the woods I raised my gun. One gobbler just couldn’t stand it. He wasn’t in strutt nor gobbled. Would he be her night in shinning armor? He would. He stepped in front of her telling her he would now take care of business. After I gave another couple yelps and clucks to my left to move the birds through the brush the safety came off. They saw an object in the woods that didn’t look like a noisy Hen. The strong wind muffled the shot and it was barely noticed by the rest of the flock as they meandered around for several minutes. The two year old Tom laid still. As I stood up the turkeys began putting and scrambling back out toward the middle of the field.

As they wandered off I thanked the hen that brought me my prize. Sean called and congratulated me. He told me it was 7:35 pm and I still had 17 minutes left.

The Tom weighed 25 pounds, had a 10 inch beard and one inch spurs and made a great ending to a long cold day.

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