How I Define Success in Turkey Hunting

For me the perfect ideal turkey hunt looks like this.  Me and my hunting partner go out into the woods at 4:30 in the morning and get into the setup around 5:00. We arrange to cover different parts of our setup and settle in waiting for the sun to come up.  When the first light of dawn begin to appear, we hear gobblers competing to be heard from their roosts in 3 or 4 directions.  As the sun comes up the gobbles are a little quieter because the turkeys are off the roost.  We start calling and it proves too much for the small flock of gobblers to ignore as 5 big turkeys come into our setup.  My dad and I shoot simultaneously killing the two biggest.  Then back to camp for food, fellowship, great outdoors and relaxation.  Then we do it all again the next day.  This is  basically what was on the Primos video I watched recently and it is fun, but not how I define a successful hunt. Actually, a successful hunt is those intangibles that you can’t make into a video.  It is having your breath taken away by a cold sunrise.  It is seeing your shadow when it is cast by the star Sirius.  It is watching your Seventy-one year old dad hike at 4:00AM in the turkey woods when many of his contemporaries are lucky to take themselves to the mall and back.  It is wanting to see the bull elk in the thicket snorting and bugling 30 feet away, but knowing that the beast may not appreciate your company as much as you his.  It is sitting down in deep cover to eat lunch and watching a doe bed down 30 feet below on the hillside.  It is a woodpecker 40 feet above you, purposefully dropping debris on you just to see what you will do.  I am excited to have shared a very successful hunt with one of my best friends.  Hope you enjoyed it Jon!