Turkey Hunting (and Fishing) at the Farm

On May 3-6 Benjamin and I (Andrew) got the opportunity to go turkey hunting at Kate's Grandparent's 90-acre farm. Our good friend, David Inyart, also got to join us. Kate's Dad (we call him "Grandpa Dave") is currently staying at the farm while it is being prepared to go on the market.
David came home with us from church Sunday night and he drove us down to "The Farm" later that night. After getting settled in and introducing David to Dave we went to bed.
We all didn't sleep too well, but we were all pretty excited when we got up at 5am, grabbed some granola bars and then marched out into the dew-soaked fields under the light of the moon.
On Monday we set the blind on the edge of the field and called the turkeys in. However, we only saw one turkey and it didn't have a visible beard. It passed right in front of us, so we had to suffer the agony of watching our prey walk out of sight.
Unfortunately, this was the only turkey that we ever saw although during the next two days we heard gobbles from a nearby turkey time and time again. However, even though we didn't bag a bird we still had a lot of fun during the rest of the day.
We had to legally stop hunting at noon, so after eating lunch we would work with Grandpa Dave on the farm. I had a good time learning to drive the tractor and operate the front loader and I also got to drive Grandpa Dave's truck through some of the fields.
Some of the birds were making nests inside some of the out barns, so we decided to take up bird-shooting. Our shoot/hit ratio was pretty miserable, but after a few hours we steadily improved. I filmed a lot of footage while they were shooting and I hope to make a video about it sometime in the future.
After the birds started to become wise and flew off we waited for them to come back by fishing in the pond. Benjamin caught some nice-sized bass that easily could've made a meal if we had kept them.
So as you've probably realized by now...even though we didn't get to bring a turkey home we still had a great time spending time with both "Davids" and enjoyed spending time in the "Great Outdoors" at the Farm.


Photo Captions:
From Monday to Wednesday we woke up at 5am to walk to our turkey blind before the sun came up.
The three of us all had to put on "makeup" while we were inside of the blind. The turkeys could've spotted us because of the contrast of our light faces against the darkness of the blind.
We had to legally stop turkey hunting at noon, but we never ran out of things to do at the farm.
We used the tractor to wiggle out an old fence post.
In the afternoon and evening we spent our time working and playing around at the farm, but we also had a great time FISHING! At the farm's pond we fished for bass, bluegill and sunfish. Benjamin caught a lot of nice-sized bass.
Noah and Mom came down later in the evenings to bring dinner. Noah had a good time playing around with the bluegill and sunfish.

The Farm-Pictures

Here are a few pictures I took at the farm while Benjamin was hunting .

October 31-Deer Hunting, Coyote Killed

Benjamin hunted for the two days of the youth deer season here in Missouri. He hunted at Kate's grandparent's farm where many deer had been sighted. Benjamin hunted from a blind but didn't get any good shots of a deer. After a break he was walking around with the gun and saw a coyote behind two trees. He looked through the scope and thought he was aiming for the coyote's shoulders, but the dog had turned around and he shot it in the abdomen. It was a clean kill in the sense that the coyote died right away, but he was using a 30-o6 and there wasn't much left of the coyote.

The next day he went hunting after church and saw 7 deer. Ben also got a shot at a deer @ 150 yards, but he was free standing and missed the deer. However, it makes the time seem worth it if you at least see a few deer and take a shot at one.

October 1-Photos Shooting at Farm

August 9, 2009

Kate’s sister, Leslie, is visiting St. Louis from Texas and she expressed a wich to learn how to shoot a gun. So after church we loaded our armory in the back of Miss Wiggles (Kate’s car) and headed for “The Farm.”
We mostly fired .22’s but Benjamin and I did get to fire a 7 millimeter magnum rifle. Watch the video below to see the kick this gun had! Actually, the kick didn’t hurt at all and neither of us were bruised.