HUNTER BAGS A BIRD
By John Massie
2012
When snow fell in the Santa Ysabel East Open Space Preserve a lot of planning for a lot of people,
including two appearances before the Board of Supervisors went down the drain. The twenty Junior
Hunters, their twenty mentors and their twenty guardians, all had been hoping for better weather in The
eastern San Diego County high country, but all knew all along that a rain out was a possibility in the last
week of March. When the final news came down that there would be no Junior Hunt in March a couple of
NWTF members began scurrying around trying to locate places on private land for some of the young
guns to still be able to Take advantage of the early Juniors-Only Mentored, single weekend, turkey hunt
provided by the California State Fish and Game Commission. I lucked out and convinced two landowners
to offer up their property near Julian. Jim Entwisle, the San Diego Chapter's "Women In The Outdoors"
Chairman, and I contacted the guardians and young hunters with less than a day's warning and managed
to find three of them, ages 9, 10, and 12, along with their mentors willing to give it a try. This is how one
of those hunts with a first time 9 year old huntress went.
There was not a trace of moonlight. The new moon rose and fell three days before this 0500 hour on the
24th of March. More importantly there was no wind either. We had about a quarter of a mile to walk
down the two track towards the east where the blackness of the tree line obscured the stars. With 6 foot
woven wire fencing on either side we were followed by a mare on the other side of the fence. Her
footfalls and snorted announcements were all that separated her from imaginary dragons in the dark.
Halfway to the roost tree on the hill we literally bumped into a woven wire gate. The tiny green light on
the bill of my cap permitted me to figure out how to open it and continue on. It was 0515 and not a sound
from the trees when we set out the two hen decoys and one "stuffer" jake. We had been pretty
comfortable for another 15 minutes when the first gobble rolled down towards us.
Then it really started in earnest. We heard at least 30 gobblers calling in the trees for a half hour as the
eastern sky began to show the first rays of tomorrow. We had three coyotes sneak up behind us
without our seeing them. They were so close that they could see the decoys we had out in front of us
and could tell that the calling was coming from the base of that oak tree and not from the decoys. They
stood there and looked back and forth at the decoy and then at us. Of course I had no gun this being a
Juniors-Only hunt period, and we didn't want to scare off the turkeys that seemed to be calling all
around us, so we let them go. Could have gotten a least one of them. Then a half hour later another
pair sneaked down the hill in front of us and ran through the set. At that time we had "hung up" birds
strutting against a fence in the open grassy field at least 300 yards off. They would gobble at every call
but this is a horse ranch and they have woven wire fencing to keep the foals out of the barbed wire so
those three big boys had three fences to get through and they were just not up to the challenge and
finally wandered off to the east gobbling all the way.
That took about 2 hours and since we could still hear them we tried to do a little Run and Gun a short
distance over to where we thought they might be hung up. They totally shut up then and I guessed we
had bumped them (Not the case. They were actually moving but we could not see them and apparently
they had not seen us either). We made a loop around to the top of the ridge on the center of the ranch
and got a bird answering that was so far off I literally didn't hear it at all when the two girls with me said
they knew which direction it was coming from. We moved another 100 yards down the hill towards the
call and I finally began to hear it. It had to be a half mile off down in that canyon but was obviously
moving and answering me so we set up in a huge boulder field with scrub oaks growing out of the cracks
in the rocks. He gobbled his way up the rocky slope till he hit the ridge right where we had started
calling. The last gobble was so close it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. He was coming
down through the pickup truck size boulders from behind us but fortunately, slightly to our left, so that
Hunter could turn and get ready.
I leaned over to nine year old Hunter (that's her real name!) and told her to take her safety off and line
up on the edge of a boulder about 15 feet from us because I thought that was where he would finally
have to show himself. When he stepped out she was aiming directly at his head without moving her
gun. He putted and spun around. He started walking away from us and got another ten feet from us
just before he would go around another boulder and be out of sight. Really a close shot but I told
Hunter to shoot, Shoot him NOW and she really hammered him with that 20 gauge. No feathers in the
air!
I had told her that the first thing you do after you shoot a turkey is RELOAD and when I looked back at
her she had the pump open but not shoved forward. She was super concentrating on the bird watching
for its head to come up. It was flopping but she didn't need to shoot it again. Then when she picked her
foot off its neck and her mother asked her to lift it for the camera she jerked her hand back from the
skin on the neck with an expression I had never heard before. " Oooh, its hot!"
Well, yes, that's true. If your hand is cool from the morning fog and the bird's living temperature is
about 105 degrees it would cause an unexpected sensation. It took a little while to get her to pick it up
but then she didn't want to put it down. She cradled it across her arms and carried it back up the 100
yards we had come down the hill and then another half mile or so back to the truck. She was so proud of
it she would not let us help her. Nine years old and took her first pheasant in the Safari Club's Junior
hunt a month earlier and now she has a turkey under her belt as well. But hey, it gets better yet!
She was walking down the hill in front of us with the bird in her arms when we saw two big long beards
run out of the area where we had left the decoys. They were probably the birds we had been talking
with from fly down on. They had missed us and we had missed them when they finally found a way
around all that fencing. Had we sat there longer they most probably would have come right in. Well we
all three gawked a bit but had not seen the decoys yet. We moved less than 20 yards farther and the
decoys came up right where we had left them. They were off about a hundred or so but something
seemed wrong. The first thing I noticed was that there was no head on the "stuffer" jake. Woops, I
thought, did those coyotes come back and damage that decoy? The two hens were right where they
belonged but when I really concentrated on the jake, it spread its wings. A real good trick for a stuffed
bird! Ok, then it started wiggling its wings and this was getting really weird. I called out to Hunter to
stop and the jakes' head popped up. What we were all three staring at was a wild gobbler mating with
that stuffer jake. He was standing on its back facing way from us with his wings spread out balancing
himself and by reaching forward and grabbing the jakes' neck his shoulders got in the way of our line of
view. Couldn't see his head for a while.
Hunter broke the silence and asked her mother what was happening.
Vicky said in a much more matter of fact tone than I could have mustered, (remember, this was Vicky's
first turkey hunt as well) that the gobbler was trying to make babies with her dad's decoy. Hunter didn't
like that prospect and angrily turned towards the bird, and with her dead jake in her arms, began
actually screaming at the bird and running down through the wet grass at it. I thought that was a little
extreme but then began to get apprehensive when the gobbler completely and absolutely ignored her
screams or rapid approach. This whole scenario was just too weird for me to have any expectation of
what was going to happen next. I thought she was actually getting too close before he finally stood up
and stepped off. For a moment I thought he might attack her but he very calmly turned and not very
quickly, walked away.
Some turkey hunters never get to experience such an occurrence that this nine year old had gone
through on her very first trip into the turkey woods.
The other two girl’s ages ten and twelve also killed first turkeys (one weighed 20.4 with a 9 inch beard
and 1 inch spurs) and we all got together for pizza at the Red Barn Restaurant at about 11:30 and while
she listened to the other two stories of the morning's hunts, Hunter got prepared. At her mother's
urging, she told the whole thing in amazing detail to the 13 people sitting around the lunch table. She
had the whole room laughing. One of the landowners who had made this whole thing possible was
sitting there laughing so hard he had tears running down his face.
Then when he told us how positive this experience had been for him I could see that some of that misty
eye was for how deep he felt. This is a jet pilot that flew F4's in Viet Nam and corporate jets all over the
world misting up over a nine year olds first turkey hunting trip. Hooray for Hunter Riedl!!
Talk about a lifetime experience!