Two Hours, Two Shots, Two Turkeys

Today is the first day of the Fall Turkey Firearms Season in Missouri!
Turkey hunting is much harder in the fall because turkeys won't be intereseted in calls until next spring. Turkeys also have excellent sight, so it can be hard to bring one down.
Last night Benjamin patterned his shotgun and tried using the high-power turkey shells that he bought. They literally blew him away!
Early this morning we headed down to Kate's Grandparent's Farm ("The Farm.")
Kate's Dad ("Grandpa Dave") had been staying at the farm and had given us "Game Reports" every day. He had spotted deer, coyote, fox and a dozen turkeys. The turkey's daily routine was to walk (or strut) around the house, walk across the field and into the woods. They usually did this at about 9-10AM. However, it had drizzled during the night, so we thought it would probably distrupt the turkeys' schedule.
Benjamin and I walked quietly through woods bordering the field and stopped at about 50 yards from the house. It was about 8:00 when Benjamin and I propped ourselves up against some trees.
Almost two hours later we were ready to go inside. It was chilly, windy, wet, and cloudy. Mom, Grandpa Dave and Noah took a last glance at the field from the window of the house before calling us in. They saw at least 18 turkeys that had taken a different route that day. Benjamin and I could not see them because of a small ridge in the field that hid them from our view. The turkey spotters in the house called Benjamin on the cell phone and told him about the birds.
We should have waited for the birds to come up to us, but Benjamin wanted to get closer. He and I walked quietly through the woods until we came up onto a hill that was only a few yards from the turkeys. Benjamin quickly fired a shot into the head of a bird and killed it. We obviously thought that the birds would immediately run or fly away, but they seemed shocked. Benjamin ran up a few feet and fired again into the neck of a running turkey. We only had two turkey tags, so we ran down the hill and tagged the turkeys' legs.
The folks still in the house drove down in the truck and we loaded the turkeys into the bed. We weighed them and examined them before telechecking them and found Benjamin had shot one adult hen and one juvenile hen. The young one weighed 7 1/2 pounds and the adult weighed 9 1/2 pounds.
Because we were all amateurs it took four hours to pluck, gut, wash and skin the two turkeys, but at this moment they're sitting in our freezer!
-J. Andrew Wong


P.S. I (of course) had my video camera and the entire shooting adventure is on video, so I'll try to edit it together as soon as possible.