Opening Day in South Carolina! Scott Schneider gets the deal done!

Opening day, spring turkey season 2009. The local news called for heavy rain and my buddy seemed skeptical about the prospects. I didn’t even let him finish his thought. “Of course we’re going! That is why we have rain gear!” Fortunately, the heavens looked kindly upon us and the rain held off as we head out to our spots.

I had learned from the master and planned this day well. The week before, I had put my plan into action by creating a ground blind out of tree limbs and evergreen branches. He taught me well in Texas last year as I weaved stick after stick together. I had gone over this scenario in my mind countless times last deer season as I watched parade after parade of longbeards and scantily clad hens tease by me and my quiet bow. He told me to do my homework. “Find the birds and luck will be yours”, he said, “It is not the calling as much as the location”. Sounded like my realtor, but the advice was heard, absorbed and put into action. And today, it paid off!

I hadn’t been in my blind 25 minutes when a hen bounded down towards my decoy – a confident, yet suggestive looking hen – and began to harass her with a barrage of clucks and offensive gestures. Then, as I peered up the plot to my left, Big Daddy came over the horizon at 80 plus yards the way Brad Pitt confidently appeared on the sand dunes in the movie Troy. I was jazzed! I raised my gun into ready position and hunkered down as the tom moved closer and closer. At 50 yards, however, his advance was interrupted by two horny jakes who scurried over to my decoy and strutted their stuff. With crackling teenage voices they attempted to gobble their way into the heart of my decoy, but she would have nothing of it. She just stood there motionless as did I, save for my fibrillating heart. Eventually, another hen filled out the foursome only 15 yards away from me and then they all walked back up the plot and out of view.

“Oh crap, what do I do now?” I thought, but I was so totally pumped by what I had just seen that I really didn’t care what happened next. So, I put in my mouth call and let out a few yelps and then shut the hell up. “Talking too much to anybody is no good”, he would say. And sure enough, not a moment later up, over the horizon, the tom returned to the scene. With the pomp and circumstance of a gubernatorial candidate, he strutted his way down towards my plastic princess. He stopped 12 yards from me and 10 yards from her and gobbled like the stud he was – but I needed him to take two more steps towards her for an open shot. I stopped breathing. “You need to be patient”, he had always told me.

In an instant, he tucked and turned from my decoy as if sensing she was used goods and walked to my left, temporarily moving behind a pine tree. I lowered my gun and moved it over to my left and when he stepped out I fired and dropped him cold. My first turkey in SC in five years of hunting there!!