First Light, Known - Ep 36

We killed a turkey this spring, this season, uh, down by the river, by the river fields is where we call it, and that particular morning, I think there are two reasons why we killed the turkey.

Probably the most important reason was because I was blessed that morning to be able to hunt with Josh Grossenbacher.

Josh is a world champion turkey caller.

He's amazing, and so having him sitting beside you, being your turkey caller is a cheat code.

I'm telling you, it's a game changer.

I think sometimes the turkeys wish they could call like he does.

He's just really good at it, and so he's, he's, he's the best.

And so Josh was with us that morning, and he makes, uh...

He's, he's pretty famous for this one thing.

He makes the diaphragm calls, the mouth calls that we sell at Rolling Thunder, and he's really...

Like I said, he's really good at it.

And that morning I had one of my best friends, his name is Larry, and I really wanted to get him a bird, and we were in a place...

The second reason I think why we killed that bird is because I knew what he was gonna do.

I really felt like I knew what he was gonna do.

When you live in a place and you're here every day, I can walk outside and some mornings I can hear the turkeys from my back porch, but this bird is in a spot where I had hunted him three times already this year and, and knew what I thought he was gonna do.

Some reasons why we didn't...

Uh, we set up on him incorrectly a couple of times and he went a different d- way, but he was in the spot where he had been every time in that same roost area.

And this morning we made the decision, this particular morning, to get as close as we possibly could to his roost site, and we got there and moved.

We got closer than I, than I thought we needed to sort of by accident, but I, I looked down there and I said, "Josh, he's gonna be right in one of those two trees." And we just kept creeping down there early enough to be moving in a place that was really quiet, and we stopped.

We thought it was about gobble time, and when he gobbled he was 15 yards away from us, literally 15 yards in a tree, exactly where we thought he might be.

He could have been a little further down, but he was really close.

And we, by luck, man, we were standing in the only spot where we, on that little s- area, where we could sit down and be hidden without having to rumble around and make a lot of noise.

There was a big tree.

We stopped there on purpose because it was a good hide, hoping we would hear him, but not realizing he was gonna be that close.

So we were able to sit down without making any noise, crawl out, set a decoy, not far at all, 'cause we didn't want him to see us and become afraid, and realized pretty quickly that we hadn't spooked him because he kept right on gobbling.