Episode #16 First Trad Turkey Hunt

We're building a MOVEMENT - a community of like minded people who celebrate the code of traditional archery worldwide.

Our dream: Connecting everyone that loves Traditional Bowhunting, inspiring people through the sport we love, to carry on the legacy of traditional bowhunting.

🚨URGENT: First 1000 members get LIFETIME FREE access!🚨

Once we hit 1000, membership becomes paid-only.

Secure your spot NOW!

Join the ultimate Traditional Bowhunting community and get:

• 🔥 Join a community of like-minded hunters who shoot traditional
• 🦅 Expert tactical tracking and scouting strategies used by the best
• 🌎 Global connections with Traditional Bowhunting enthusiasts
• 🎯 Exclusive training tips to elevate your game
• 🏆 Contests, giveaways, and members - only perks
• 🌲 Gain exclusive access to resources 
• 👕 Vote on Traditional Bowhunting merchandise only available to members

The clock is ticking on FREE lifetime access!

Join now and be part of the movement of Traditional Bowhunting.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Code of Traditional Archery, brought to you by Primitive Stone Archery and the founder, Grant Richardson. Welcome to the Code of Traditional Archery Podcast. I'm Grant Richardson, your host. We want to welcome all the new people joining us, and a big thank you to those who have been following us and supporting us thus far. Thank you for your feedback. This is episode 16 of season two entitled Youth Turkey Hunt Time. Our original intent of this podcast was to bring back traditional archery and bow hunting to an older era where hunting ability met Archer, and together the two formed a bow hunter. A strong resurgence in shooting and hunting with recurves, longbows, and even self bows is being seen. And hunting with stickable, so to speak, and the growth into various hunting seasons, their use, that is, using a single string bow is appealing due to the recognition of being simply a heck of a lot harder way to hunt, due to the skill set, dedication, and often woodsmanship required to be successful. And those very things requiring time and experience afield that so many parts of the bow hunting industry attempt to circumvent with technology nowadays, that is, to find shortcuts. Those very things are now becoming important to many again. And dedication matters to what is, to a degree, a perishable skill, that is maintaining effectiveness when one is shooting a single string bow, is a large part of the journey anyone walks on when hunting with a recurve or a long bow. I will say the most common traits and byproducts or peripheral benefits I've seen of hunting with a single string bow are focus, concentration, and patience. And the finest shots I've seen with traditional bows, no matter how they shot that bow, all held these three qualities to a very high level of ability indeed. None of them shot the same ways or even the same bows. I once watched a famous bow hunter and author at a hunt camp as a young kid shoot a dozen arrows before every hunt, even in the darkness of early morning at a target using an old Coleman lamp to shoot by, and I asked him why he did it. He kept shooting and told me to go grab my bow, which at the time was a twenty five pound browning green glass Apache youth recurve, and I ran with glee to our old browning Bronco, grabbing it from the back and joined him. I got up with him every morning to shoot before they all headed out to their stands, and I asked him what he thought of my shooting. What you think matters more than what I do. The effort, I remember him pausing and stating, it matters more than what others think of your shooting. And he continued, folks should be concerned more about getting better at hunting and how they shoot than what the person besides them doing. And his advice to me was just keep shooting, kid. There was no cold shot walking into his hunts, that was for certain, and I didn't understand it back then quite like I do now, but someone even of his stature and effectiveness as both a bow hunter and instinctive archer warmed up before every hunt. And a practice I've carried on now from watching my own father since a young age. Warming up before shooting was good practice, so to speak, and important, and it allowed your hand-eye coordination to zero in, so to speak, and that inner sighting system that is innate in all of us as humans. This past winter, our youngest was determined to hone her shooting abilities to prep for the spring's turkey season. And for almost two months she insisted on heading out as much as possible to practice with her short 52-inch recurve. She'd had the bow now for just over two years and had practiced diligently for the past year's deer season with it. At this point in time, she was nearing thirteen years of age, and shooting the forty pound short little recurve, even with her longer draw length and size and height, it meant she needed continuous practice, not only to strengthen and hone those muscles, but the tendons in order to shoot it into her own shooting process. It had taken her years of shooting and working her way into that boat to become proficient. It did not happen overnight. As her father, I'd been proud watching her grow over the years following me through the woods, both not only as her ability in tracking and hunting improved, but the recognition that she played a much larger part in the circle of life and the forest of her youth than she knew was beginning to dawn on her. And that journey and those forests and wild places had now cemented her own framework, and she was building her house. It was a process of her way, her own expectations and belief systems, and how it was going to all play out in the woods. Turkeys had always enthralled her, and in fact, it was turkeys that she started on hunting, following me around as a little girl, apart from rigneck pheasants, which is her second passion, which of course, as you know, can become a cross-country running competition at times. Turkey hunting is, in my opinion, the best way to prime kids for big game hunting. And for the most part, the interaction with the birds plays a big part in keeping their interest up, along with the process, of course, of hunting early morning hours, getting them used to trudging through the darkness, and that little bit of discomfort trying to set up, intercept or call in where that tom's going to be. It's not a sure thing. It's important to know that Turkan is one of those things that is an act of participation sport, so much as a hunt, almost a chess match afoot. In other words, you hear the feedback from the bird, so to speak, you're reversing biology and having that tom come to the hen, and you're playing the role of that hen, flipping it against nature. Sometimes they'll come in on a line, and other times, as I stated before in my book, they'll play the largest game of Marco Polo you've ever played in your life, and leave you hanging there for hours, waiting for results and wondering what you could have done differently. At this point, she was seasoned with turkey hunting from following me around. She knew the different calls, locations, roosting areas, strutting areas, setup and scouting she had been prepping frequently for, and although birds did not seem as abundant as they had been the year prior, she was still excited about the prospect of her first turkey season with her recurve bow in hand. And I kept saying repeatedly to her, It's your hunting time, not my dear. This is something that's been echoing in her mind repeatedly over the past year, and I've left most, if not all, of the decision making up to her. It's become part of her learning curve. It was three o'clock in the morning. I grabbed her by the toe and shook her from her sleep as gently as I could. I'm up, Dad. I'm up. I was actually awake waiting for you. I went downstairs, packed our bows into their cases, ensure all the kit was intact, and let our dogs out. With utter disdain, they both looked at me, and they knew they wouldn't be accompanying us on this hunt. Nonetheless, bird dogs will be bird dogs, and they cried and whined like puppies in their crates. The stars were shining as we stepped out together into the driveway and looked up at the sky. Clear day coming, Dad. Yes, it looks beautiful, I said. Although we hadn't seen as many birds as I wanted to in the prior weeks, there were still quite a few in the fields on the way home from scouting and shooting practices. We stepped into the car and she looked over at me winking, coffee? Sure. She checked the back of the truck to make sure I hadn't missed anything, and hopped into the front seat wide eyed with excitement. It took us almost an hour to get out that day to our property, and we wheeled in quietly in the parking area popping gravel under the tires as we parked. She stared into the darkness and at the dawn creeping slowly into view on the horizon. I opened the lift gate and listened for several minutes, but all we heard was spring peepers croaking out their songs, and a woodcock in the sky winnowing high above us to parts unknown. We had about twenty minutes at that point till sunrise. She picked her way quietly over to the lift gate, opened up the back, and brought her bow out on top of the truck. She grabbed an arrow and I beckoned to her to turn the back porch light on to her grandparents' house to warm up and practice. I'm a firm believer in the warm up, as I said before, and it's something I've ingrained in her. It was still fairly dark in the back side of the property, and birds were waking up. Cardinals were awake starting their pretty bird, pretty bird routine, and there were some Orioles as well in the back of the woods to the right of us, twittering their ornate songs for the whole world to hear. Haven't heard any gobbles yet, Dad, she said. She shot another one of her camo XX seven five aluminum arrows at a well used turkey target, pinwheeling the head with it at about fifteen yards. She walked back to the setup of another turkey target and started slinging arrows at it as well, and she was doing pretty good two out of three times. She was bang on the money. No problem, she nodded at me, and her accuracy I was pretty impressed with. Suddenly from the distance we heard it, a short, raspy drawn gobble, definitely still in the tree, echoing towards us. Shortly after that, not very far from where we've been practicing our setup and her shot practice, we could hear a hand tree calling. The dew point like sounds dropping and twittering through the woods, like raindrops falling onto the ground into the largest lake in the world. We gotta get back there before fly down happens, I said to her. She's probably about eighty yards from her setup. Sounds good, Dad. She took one last shot, squarely hitting the turkey target in the head. Let's get going. You lead the way, I whispered, and off she went ahead of me, quiet as a cat, her footfalls almost making zero noise as she walked up the old farm lane, the sky now glowing reds and yellows, as if a curtain was rising just for her entrance, and I dare say it was. Freeze, Dad. Look ahead of us, and there stood a buck, growing velvet stubs from his head with two does about fifty yards away. I said, you know, we should get going. I want to watch them, Dad, and we did for five or six minutes as they made their way into the field, finally waving goodbye with their large white flags bounding away from us into the thicket adjacent we were going to turkey hunt. Another gobble cut the air, and she turned to me with a very serious look in her face and started to increase her footfalls towards where we're going and our setup was on the rise of a large open where we'd secured in the forest was once a large open farmed area surrounded by apple trees. Twenty five years earlier, though, a large white pine plantation had been centered, and we had to cut it back because it had sucked out the ground and nutrients for nearby fruit and nut trees. We had worked on this clearing we're headed to for the past five years in the heat of the summer, battling both mosquitoes, black flies, as well as ticks, and this area had now become almost an oasis for turkeys. Used to be a transition area, but it now was a strut zone, the edge of a feeding area, as well as a satellite roost, and we'd taken all our birds here in the past few years. As we hit the edge of the clearing to cross one of the worn down cedar fence rails, she froze. I can hear raindrops ahead of us, maybe eighty yards up, Dad. She's still up in the tree. I said, Do you want a decoy out? No, just get in the blind. It's okay, Dad, you'll call him Timmy, and winked at me. Well the pressure was on now, I thought. If I didn't call the birds in, I laughed to myself. She'll burn me for it later. Slipping quietly into the blind, we brushed in weeks earlier, and to practice firm as well, she sat up in her chair, and I told her to make sure to practice your draw first. You've got good limb clearance. Behind us another gobble ripped the air and we could hear a hen clucking slowly less than fifty yards behind us. The hen was now flying down. She had an arrow knocked and was looking forward to her left side of her shoulder. Ahead of us, maybe eighty yards or ninety straight out, another gobble cut the air. The other Tom answered back. I let out a series of quiet, feeding clucks and purrs, and when I did that, the hen that was behind us, still treed, flew down in a cackle and a cacophony of sounds hitting the ground, and started clucking loudly at the intruder that she could not see in her own territory. This got the other hen riled up, and of course the toms all joined in, and at one point we had at least five different toms sounding off all around us, crowing as if they were roosters in one chicken coop. She turned and looked at me. It's a lot of birds, she whispered. Yep, I said. But turkeys will do as turkeys do, and the morning went on like that, though. We played Marco Polo, we had one Tom come in about fifty yards behind us where we couldn't see him hang up, behind a large cops of trees, only to be led away by another hen. And there was many hens. As nice as it was to see for the population, it was proving to be an issue. We opted to pull out at eleven AM, grab something to eat, and back for the afternoon. Back in by one o'clock, I tucked two fresh blueberry muffins my mom had packed for her into her backpack, and we snuck up into the back of the forest regional line again. The sun had grown high in the sky at that point and was radiating through the trees into the clearing where a setup was located, the light reaching out to the ground as we entered the large opening. An oven bird began to sing as if on cue its familiar teacher, teacher, teacher song for us in the maple canopy above. We walked to where the edge of the blind was and she stopped, noticing several square j's and popcorn turkey poop on the ground. They've been here, Dad. I nodded. They're not too far. Let's go. We scooted in quickly and got settled. And within fifteen minutes, after a series of prayers and feeding clocks, we had three hens walk straight into the left side of our blind, and she noticed them first from her angle. I was looking at her as she urgently with her eyes was pointing in the direction, excited to see so many birds. And finally, with older eyes, I saw what she was looking at, as the hens fed their way slowly up the fence line, less than ninety yards from us. That's when I heard it. Far left side of our setup, a familiar noise, a noise like no other I've ever heard any other time, and as far as I can reckon, only one other creature makes it in that manner. Like the humming of a large hive of bees vibrating all at once with a sharp snap ticking noise, I looked her and silently said the word Tom. She gave me a thumbs up, and the smile that was creasing her face was now more focused and serious, and sure enough, through the back crack of the blind, I looked through less than fifteen feet away was a big Tom walking slowly in the direction of the hens. His beard was long and he was at full strut, watching the hens as they walked up through the woods on the fence line towards us. He was spitting and drumming as he went, as if the entire woods owed him homage to his regal presence. And I began to worry he was gonna hang up, and for almost twenty minutes, at some points only eight feet to the side of us where she could not get a shot, due to three large white pine trees blocking her, he strutted away. There just simply was not enough room. The hens started leaving and walking through the gap in the fence ahead of us, maybe thirty yards away, I looked over and whispered, it's now or never, he's gonna follow them, get ready. She leaned out from the blind just as the Tom started to trot after the hens at a slow jog. But what we didn't see was the other Tom on the side of the fence that was blocked on our right side, and it was that Tom he was trying to intercept from the hens as he jogged across the open lane, right across her shooting lane. At almost twenty yards out, she leaned out as far as she could, hit full draw with her recurve, and with a firm anchor, let the camo XX seven five arrow fly. The white and yellow barred flat shaft twisted through the air to the Tom's neck which she had been taught to focus on and flew so close that had that bird stopped it would have been hers, and she literally shaved hair, feathers off the back of his neck, shooting for that crease line. The Tom hurdled the fence and didn't bat a wink or a beak as he made it again to full strut, now almost thirty yards away. She knocked another arrow, looked over at me, shook her head. Dad, I'd shoot, but there's a stump right in front of him, and there was a large rather stump of a cedar tree that had been cut years prior, and he was strutting directly behind it. I just said to her, breathe. Her eyes were now laser directed at the regal bird, the sunlight dancing across his feathers as he sought to deal with his rival, intimidating him, and the second Tom proceeded to gobble back and forth with him while the hands made their way down the fence. She was intensely focused, and I've only seen her that intense when playing hockey, rolling, training Brazilian jiu-jitsu, or kicking the tie pads with me. I looked over at her. You good? I'm good, she said. I'm not happy I missed him. But I thought to myself at that point, this is gonna make or break it for her. She knelt down, tried to get a gap to find an area to find a place to place that arrow, and she turned and whispered, Dad, let's just wait, I want to get him closer. I said, Well, you got a couple of feathers for earrings, she laughed under her breath. I'd like to say that she took another shot of that bird and squarely and cleanly hit it and dropped it. But she didn't. The trom strutted around twenty five, thirty, thirty five, forty yards away, often brushing away or moving too fast out of the range she was comfortable in. She took her time. She said, Dad, you know, as he left the area, I've learned a lot about turkeys today, and thanks for giving me the chance. She turned and looked at me. You're not upset I missed. Absolutely not, dear. You're playing a game of inches, and you missed by a hair at a moving bird. I looked at her and winked. Do you want to hear a story? Her eyes blinked at me expecting to hear a tale of triumph. And I said, Well, the story starts just over thirty years ago. It involves me in my early twenties bow hunting for turkeys for the very first time with no knowledge and no experience except the wild mandatory turkey course that Ontario had at that time, if you wanted to hunt the birds. Uh huh, she said, and I get I get it, I bet you got one, she said, smiling at me. I shook my head. I did not get one. I hunted for five straight days on a large property I had access to. At that point, when our season first started Ontario, it was a good spot to sit in. It bordered a trout stream that an old family cousin had, hectares outside of Peterborough, Ontario. And I told her, you know, I would just brush myself in with a tree or a fence line and sit behind it. My calling wasn't very good. And, you know, I was worried even about scaring birds away with it. But after five days of hunting and walking miles and miles and searching for birds on the vast property, I finally had one come in much the same way you did. Well, what happened? Why didn't you get it? I said, Well, I shot all three broadheads I had in that quiver at that time that morning. The first one starting at fifteen, and then thirty-five, and then about forty, and I missed every single arrow I shot at it. I was all over the place that day, it frazzled me. That bird proceeded to strut on our arrows, I told her, as if some sort of carnival fair dance, and my arrows were the markers for the boundaries. And I had to laugh at myself. This is your time, I told her. I've had my share of birds over the years, and I'm sure I'll have more in the future, I said to her, winking. You, my dear, are a far better hunter at your age than I was thirty years ago hunting these birds. They will play with you. They're challenging targets when they're not standing a mere few feet away at full strut, locked up on a decoy. You're within a hair of having that bird on that shot, and I dare say it was moving quite a bit past fifteen to twenty years, and you should really be proud of that. I really want to do it this way with my bow, she said, Dad. The skill part had connected with her. You know, the difficulty itself was inspiring for her above all else, and she was firmly rooted now in that process of connecting with her. We listened to some toms and got several out toms and had some very close calls. We had some birds real close and we just couldn't close the deal. We'll be going back in the woodlot and doing more habitat remunation on the property in the next few weeks, but that day as we were leaving, as she collected her arrow, she walked over and looked back at the blind, picked up the three small black feathers she shaved off of his neck, looked back at the blind again, she said, Boy, I was so close. She walked over where he'd been printing himself and strutting, and picked up a secondary wing. Dad, he left me a gift, and she stuck the feather in her ball hat, turned away, looked at me and smiled. She reached for my hand, gave it a squeeze, and said thanks. We scout hunted her way out that morning, I let her lead the way again. I don't want to bust the roost up, so let's just take a little look around and scout through. As I say in my book, failure is the path to resilience. And this kid wasn't about to stop. We walked out into the sunny field, and the sunlight hit her face, and she turned and said, Come on, keep up, old man. And I was already getting burned by her at twelve years of age. We stepped through the opening, the past where our dogs from the past are buried, and we thanked them for accompanying us on our hunt that morning. Walking back down to the house, we put our bows on top of the trunk, and she said, Dad, just please leave mine out. I want to practice some more. And I did. I watched her shoot quietly for an hour before heading home, and no words were needed. It's not about the success. And I dare say, if you're getting into traditional bowling and success is a driver behind everything you do, and it may, I caution you not to be burdened by the lack of success you may experience. Take the journey and place it squarely over your heart and connect it with your mind. And when success does happen, it'll be all that much better. And if you're already experiencing success, And you have the time and ability to do so. Take a kid hunting. It'll change their life and yours along the way. I've got a few announcements to make. Coming up, we have our first free five-day traditional bow hunting challenge. The traditional bowl hunting challenge on the 19th of June, 2023. In a week or so, we're very excited. This is going to cover everything one needs to just get started in traditional bow hunting. If you know someone who's wanting to get started, maybe you're a non-hunter, maybe you've seen survival shows that have really appealed to you in the manner in which they have to chase game with the stick bow and single string bow. Maybe you're a compound or a wheelbow hunter and you feel like taking something up there requires a little bit more challenge, a little bit more time and practice for certain. And you know you're a little bit confused about the vast information that's out there, this will get you off on the right foot. The best part is we actually have a VIP portion of this right now that's really specialized with the reduced fee attached to it. Check it out. It's in the link in the comments below. That is a really fantastic way of getting deep immersion into the sport. I'm so passionate about, and it includes three months on our hunt ready membership platform. You can check out the links, as I said, um, below in our podcast comments. Uh, we really want to thank Brian Burkhart, the president of Compton Traditional Ball Hunters, who will be raffling off a signed copy of our book, The Code of Traditional Archery at the Compton Rendezvous next week, June 15th to 18th. Check out their website or Instagram or Facebook profile for more information. They still have tickets for a great Kodiak Sitka blacktail hunt package, as well as an amazing, amazing women's membership drive hunt package. Uh, we want to give a big shout out and congratulations as well to Melody Higa, host of the Gone Before Podcast, and new social media director for Compton Traditional Bow Hunters. If you haven't already, be sure to check out her fantastic podcast and content and give Melody a follow on her Instagram handle, Renaissance Woman. We're coming out with an audiobook of the code of traditional archery as well as looking at hardcover copies before the end of the summer. And we've had a lot of people want signed copies of her book, and this is the best way we can actually do that for you. If you want a signed copy, shoot us an email, admin at primitivestonearchery.com. The link will be in our comments, and we will sort a process out for you. We can do dedications to people as well, and of course, Father Day, Father's Day is coming up. Just let us know in the email, we'll get a hold of you and work that out. Our book is available if you want for purchase by yourself on Amazon, of course, as well as Barnes and Noble, and the link to his Amazon for our book is in the comments. Be sure to follow our podcast on Amazon Audible and check out our YouTube channel as well for some great tips on shooting and hunting with traditional equipment. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate all the positive feedback we've been getting from folks all over the world, both on our podcast and the book, The Code of Traditional Archery. This confirms for us the intent we have on our platform message based on the three pillars of the Code of Traditional Archery. Weapons proficiency with a stick bow, ethics to guide us on our collective journey, and conservation and stewardship in order to protect the wildlife, woods, fields, and waterways we hunt as our themes are resonating. If you haven't already, check out Compton Traditional Bow Hunters, a great organization that ensures the traditions of bow hunting with the stick and string is alive and well, not only now, but for generations to come. Thanks again for listening in. We encourage you to immerse yourself in the art of the stick bow. Shoot straight and walk with us.