Some hunts stick with you not because they were easy, but because they took a little grit and a lot of patience—and because of the people you got to share them with.
This past spring, my wife and I had the chance to tag along on a hunt with some good friends, including Claire Crowe, who helps keep us all in line at the NWTF convention every year (she’s the hospitality queen, no doubt about it!).
This was Claire’s shot at getting her gobbler, and I was just happy to be part of the ride. The weather wasn’t in our favor, but sometimes that makes the success taste a little sweeter. Here’s how it played out…
Story time....
Me and my wife tagged along with another couple Chris and Claire Crowe on a mission to get Claire a turkey!
Claire is our NWTF convention hospitality queen as we call her! She usually maps out the events from eating and entertainment for after the show every evening and never disappoints.
She’s sho nuff important!😁
So, we all met up to see if we could get her on a turkey this spring. Which the weekend we had was cold and windy... We all hunted hard and seemed like the cooler temps and overcast had the turkeys in a funk.
One cool cloudy evening as a last resort, we slipped up to a large food plot and lo and behold, we found one of those elusive longbeards with a hen!
He was just staying close to her feeding in clover not gobbling nor was he strutting. That told me right then and there that my job was probably to persuade the hen to our setup which was a tough spot to make it work... But it was our only chance as it was getting late in the evening.
I have learned over the years that trying to persuade a hen or hen’s to drag a gobbler into the gun is the way to go. I am way more successful by soft calling with purrs, clucks, low-volume, non-excited yelping.
It's more welcoming with the calling rather than trying to start a fight... I promise that you will be way more successful with that mind set when calling to hens.
We started it off with a soft, mid-tone yelps on a Dixie Combo to let the old girl know we were there and went into soft bubbly clucks and some super-soft coaxing yelping.
We had sat down on the edge of the field. It was a perfect spot where I could turn around on the tree and cup my hands around my mouth and throw the yelps and clucks down below us as if we were further away.
It took close to an hour for those turkeys to slowly pull our way with them never making a peep to let us know their position.
Then all of a sudden, we see the top of that hen's head coming through the grass as she tops the small incline. Once we could see her whole body, we could see the top of the gobbler's head glowing red just over the top of the green grass following as planned.
Now thankfully, by the time the old hen was too close, the gobbler was fully exposed because she nailed us to the wall with those eyeballs of hers.
About the second sharp cluck from the hen and that old gobbler met the match of Claire’s 28 ga!
Nothing like ending the day with a successful hunt and a hard hunt at that! We all walked over to the big gobbler to admire him, and I instantly noticed he was a slick leg turkey with the other leg having a fine hooked spur.
But there was something else that was special about this old turkey... He had evidently broken his leg with the spur and it had healed up. Leaving him with a crooked leg.
He definitely had a will to survive, and I can’t imagine being that old of a gobbler with a broken leg trying to survive long enough to heal! They truly are tough birds.
He for sure was an older turkey that had seen and been through a lot in his time roaming the hills and hollows.
I couldn’t think of a more deserving person to get to harvest this old gobbler, and I was certainly glad we were all there to celebrate that hunt with them in the woods. 🦃
Hunts like this one remind me why I love this sport so much. It’s not always about big gobbling birds on a perfect spring morning—it’s about the friends you meet, the challenges you face, and the memories you make together in the woods.
Watching Claire get her bird after a tough hunt—and seeing how tough that old gobbler was himself—was the kind of moment we all live for. You couldn’t have asked for a better ending to that day.
If you find yourself in a situation like this one, don’t forget the power of soft calling. A little finesse can go a long way, especially when you’re working hens or pressured birds.
👉 Shop the Friction Calls & Diaphragm Calls we used here »
👉 Learn more about calling hens in to bring gobblers close »
👉 Read More Turkey Hunting Stories »
See y’all in the woods,
~ Lyle