Love it when a plan comes together, what started out a tough rainy stormy day end up with a great reward. Sat morning opening day of youth weekend spring turkey found my Grandson (Cyrus) and I sitting in my camper in Nemo Texas waiting for a storm to pass by, watching the radar I could tell we where barely catching the tail end of a pretty severe storm. After the lightening show and thunder subsided and passed on by we slipped out to the Turkey woods to a beautiful Texas sunrise. The birds where really talking and we immediately had several toms letting us know they were interested in our hen talk, a great start to a first Turkey hunt! Not long after being in the tent blind we could hear hens right behind us in the woods, purring, yelping and scratching around in the leaves and then the thunder of a big Tom that nearly made us jump from our seats! Things was starting to get exciting, they came out but just out of range from my 12ga shotgun he was using. I tried to convince the gobbler to leave the hens and come in to our set up but after a while he left but not before putting on quite the show for us, strutting and thundering in the early morning silence!
We had 3 other Toms working and responding to our calls and getting real close when then the rain set in. After it let up the woods got silent, deafening silent, no birds chirping, toms wouldn’t respond to our calls nothing! We decided to back out and go to our favorite breakfast restaurant and come up with a new game plan. It was around 2PM and we slipped back in the woods to a new set up and started working the birds, it was a long quite afternoon but patience paid off, around 5:30 the same Tom and hens from earlier in the morning came out and this time within range. Cyrus lifted the browning 12ga loaded with 3” mags and let the hammer down, perfect shot and dropped him in his tracks. Man you couldn’t have made me any prouder, and him any happier, you couldn’t wipe that smile off his face with turpentine, mine either for that matter.
Here ya go. Mr. Cyrus Levin Routh Reddell with his first gobbler. This year has been a great year for Cyrus, he has killed a Doe, his first Buck (management 8 point) and now his first spring Gobbler. Check out the coloration on this bird, he was so dark colored almost black and then the one light colored fan feather, a unique bird for sure and one for the wall.

Congratulations to both of you. And, you nailed telling the story.

sounds like a great hunt and good job to you and Cyrus on his first bird.

Congrats!

Beautiful story!! and a hunt done right nothing like patience, some times you have to "back up and punt"

Awesome Story and Congrats!!!

I have only seen one bird that dark.

Looks like an eastern.

J.J.

Glorious!

Thanks for sharing! Taking our 14 year old daughter this weekend.

Good stuff right there! Congrats!

Thanks all and good luck TurkeyHunter to you and your daughter!

Good ending to a great weekend. Hope my 9 yr old son gets to take one this year.