Grit, determination, and a bit of luck helped make the chase for a first successful turkey hunt well worth the challenge

There are two types of turkey hunters in the world. The type who tells you turkey hunting is easy and the type who tells you turkey hunting is hard. In my opinion, they’re both mad. I have spent the last two years hunting turkeys in six different states and still haven’t seen a Tom (adult male) walk out of the woods. I was beginning to think turkeys weren’t real until I had an insanely lucky experience this year. Let me tell you about what it took to tag my first turkey. To do that, I have to take you back a few years to why I started this venture in the first place.

Two Years Ago
I grew up duck hunting and enjoy shooting a shotgun more than any other firearm. It had been several years since I had done any type of wing or bird hunting, and I really missed hunting with a shotgun. In November 2024, I signed up for an all-female duck hunt taking place on January 2nd in West Tennessee. There were only 50 spots, and the event sold out in minutes. It was on that trip that my passion for watching birds respond to a call and the anticipation of waiting for them to fly close enough to take a shot was rejuvenated. Shortly after this trip, I got the idea to try my hand at turkey hunting. I had never turkey hunted, but I’d seen enough Instagram Reels and friends’ photos of their prized Toms to know spring turkey hunting is probably one of the most anticipated seasons of the year. I reached out to a few friends to see who could take me turkey hunting so I could learn the ropes. After all, if turkeys just need to respond to a call, how hard could it be?

My First Sits
I learned just how hard turkey hunting is during the first few sits with my friends. I drove to Pennsylvania and South Carolina with folks who had bagged plenty of birds before. We hunted a lot of private land equipped with Moultrie trail cameras, and turkeys pinged almost daily in the offseason. We explored public lands known for where turkeys like to roost, and where plenty of birds have been harvested over the years. We sat in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. We used both semi-permanent ground blinds and natural concealment techniques, using bushes and trees to blend in. I listened to my friends send call after call of turkey yelps, clucks, purrs, and more to no avail. It was that first spring turkey hunting experience in 2025 that really made me question whether or not the pursuit of a turkey was worth it. I decided not to quit; it was time to build my own turkey-hunting loadout.

Building My Turkey Loadout
Turkey hunting requires very specific gear and a heavy amount of camo to cover everything but your eyes. Turkeys can detect the slightest movements and have excellent hearing, which is what makes them so challenging to hunt. If turkeys had the same sense of smell deer and predators have, they would be next to impossible to fool. I started by making sure my camouflage included a patterned hat, face mask, neck garter, and gloves, plus long-sleeve shirts and pants.

Next, I focused on an easy-to-collapse, easy-to-move blind with a comfortable chair I could sit in for hours. I went with the Ameristep Throwdown blind, along with a low-to-the-ground, camo-patterned chair from Amazon. The final step in building the blind is deciding what tools you need to build a stable shooting “rest” or position for a shotgun, similar to building a stable position when shooting a rifle. The difference is you need to be able to move the shotgun left and right or be able to tilt up or down, as you can’t plan for where a turkey might come out. I went with two different setups that fit my needs in different hunting locations. The first is the Gen 3 monopod trigger stick from Primos Hunting, which allows me some stability but the fastest up-and-down movement by far. My second setup uses a Two Vets Tripod with the V2 Tac-Table from Rebel Scum Industries attached, plus a Wiebad Gear sand-filled micro fortune cookie to rest on top of the table. I’ll also swap the tac table and bag for an Arca-compatible saddle tripod mount.

The right shotgun is more of a personal preference, but no matter, I do recommend choosing one with the right camouflage pattern for where you plan to hunt. I went with a 12-gauge shotgun, but a 20-gauge is a lot easier on the shoulder when shooting turkey ammunition. Also, if you have the budget to choose a gas-operated shotgun vs. an inertia-driven shotgun, they have a lot less felt recoil and are much more reliable at cycling if you don’t properly shoulder the gun. I prefer gas-operated shotguns in hunting scenarios because you never know what kind of unconventional shooting position you might find yourself in, which is what can cause malfunctions when cycling. I chose the Beretta A300 Ultima Mossy Oak Bottomland with a 28-inch barrel. I also recommend mounting a sling on your shotgun, especially if you plan to cover a lot of ground and move locations. The final piece of the perfect turkey-hunting shotgun is installing a turkey choke. This is a necessity and not optional, as a turkey choke is designed to increase pattern density, which you need especially if you have to take a shot on a bird at 50 yards plus. The choke I installed is an Indian Creek Black Diamond Strike compatible with my Beretta shotgun.

 

The final tools needed to complete my turkey loadout were calls. I tried a mouth call once, and it was difficult enough that I have no interest in learning how to use those calls (for now). The two calls I use are a box call made by a local artisan and a Wicked Series Pot call from Zinc Calls.

Fast Forward to 2026
I’m not joking when I say I was hunting just about every single day between Tennessee and South Carolina’s spring turkey seasons this year. Whether I was solo or with a hunting buddy, I was in the woods all day, on and off trying different spots and working different calls. I was relentless in my pursuit of a turkey. In South Carolina, you can only shoot Toms and not Jakes (juvenile male birds), which was a lot more challenging, as Toms don’t get to be Toms without being extremely smart.

The South Carolina season opened first, and the day before the opener, my friend Jahred and I had several giant Toms on trail cameras strutting their fans as if they knew just how to tease us both. That entire week was a bust. I kicked up hens constantly, saw a few Jakes, and tried at least a dozen hunting spots across almost 200 acres. I use the onX Hunt app to track the weather, wind patterns, and mark waypoints of where I set up each day so I can ensure I’m never in the same spot or area too often. It also keeps me on the land I legally have access to, and nowhere I shouldn’t be.

The Tennessee season went much the same. I had Toms on my trail cameras and even had a hen fly down from the roost and land about 10 yards in front of me, but no legal birds came out during any of the first few weeks of turkey season. I was really discouraged, getting up at 4 and 5 am and going to bed well after dark with little to show for it. It wasn’t until the final days of turkey season that my luck turned around.

When It All Came Together
There was less than two weeks left of the Tennessee turkey season, and I was burning the candle at both ends. It was a Tuesday evening when I was working late at my gun shop on a rifle I had to have ready by Friday to compete that weekend in a major match. A friend was willing to take me out on his property toward middle Tennessee the next morning, which meant a 3 a.m. wake-up call. I knew I had little choice if I wanted a turkey, so even though I didn’t finish at the shop until 1 a.m., I took a quick nap, hopped in my Tundra, and took off for an early-morning sit.

The woods opened up much the same that morning. Lots of birds chirping, squirrels running up the trees, but no turkeys were heard. My friend Brennan and I decided to hop around to different pieces of land his family owns to try our hand in both fields and forest. He called for me so I could stay alert and ready in case we heard any gobblers. We started in a beautiful, wide-open field where he had filmed dozens of Toms in that same spot a few weeks earlier on his iPhone. With no luck there, we went to another spot and tucked ourselves in under a tree where the turkeys were known to cross from field to forest. We sat for hours until I decided to call it a day and say luck wasn’t on our side. We were walking back to the truck through a clearing when, all of a sudden, I spotted a bearded male turkey walking not far ahead of us. I had my shotgun loaded but slung as I whispered to Brennan, “Should I shoot it?” He confirmed it was a Jake and said that if I could unsling the shotgun and fire before it took off, I should go for it.

My movement while unslinging the shotgun spooked the turkey, and it had started walking into the tree line. I got the gun up and was moving right to left until I could get a clear shot at its head through the dense forest. I almost lowered the shotgun to give up, as it was a good 30-35 yards already into the trees, until it finally stepped between two trees and gave me the shot I needed. One perfectly timed shot and the bird was down. I vividly remember feeling so elated, as if a weight had lifted from my chest in that moment. I couldn’t believe I finally had harvested an Eastern wild turkey. He turned out to be a Jake, and one that had suffered what looked like a coyote bite or another predator’s attack. His breast and leg had been torn open, exposing a lot of the meat with a rotting smell that I won’t soon forget. I was extremely upset that I still wouldn’t get to try fresh turkey meat, since I eat everything I harvest, but I was proud to put down an animal that had been suffering, by the looks of it.

Reflections
The congratulatory messages I received from family and friends are still something I look back at today with pride. I earned a lot of respect from seasoned hunters after they saw the time, effort, and money I put into harvesting this first turkey. In the end, I had a blast hunting with my friends Barb, Jahred, Brennan, Frank, and more across the East Coast. I made a lot of memories and had a bunch of laughs along the way. I don’t know what next spring turkey season will bring, but this first bird is one I’ll never forget.

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