Daylon’s first turkey hunt

On April 1, 2023, the opener for our youth, Daylon Skipper went on his first turkey hunt. After several days of preparation shooting the Stevens 301 .410 paired with TSS and Indian Creek choke he was confident in his shooting and so were grandpa and I.

We got the shooting tripod and ground blind set up in advance and counted the days down till opening day. Forecast for opening day was not good at all, very high winds and storms but a man only gets so many opening days in his lifetime and I didn’t want my son to miss his first one.

We got settled in before daylight and just waited on day break in hopes of hearing gobbles, but it was just so windy we didn’t hear anything. Around 8 a.m., the first crow flew overhead and that sounded off the first gobble of the morning, and not one, but four long beards gobbling.

Hit the Hanks slate, couple quick cuts and a yelp and they were on the way quickly!

The birds popped out in the field and seen our jake and hen, they then ran across the field to start beating on the Jake! Grandpa cocked the hammer and turnt on the red dot for Daylon and told him to pick one, put the dot on his head, and squeeze the trigger.

Daylon did just that and dusted his first long beard. Kicker to the story, he didn’t shoot the Tom’s on the decoys at 15 yards. He shot the longbeard “out in left field” and when I asked him why he done that he said “I wanted to shoot the far one daddy” That longbeard was 45 yards, on the ground dead according to our range finders. Daylon is 5-years-old and he already can’t wait for youth week to end so he can go again!

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Tag-A-Turkey

Congratulations to Skipper, who is now entered in our 2023 Tag-A-Turkey Contest.

This makes him eligible for our grand prize, which includes a 3-year subscription to Carolina Sportsman Magazine, a Thermacell prize package, a Convergent Hunting Solutions Bullet HP Bluetooth predator call, and numerous other prizes.

If you’d like to enter your gobbler in our contest, click here.

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