I took my wife Misty to High Cotton Hunting, a 10,000-acre tract of land in west Tennessee that was set-up as a quail preserve but homed plenty of deer and turkey. The first turkeys we set-up to call were gobbling really well. When the turkeys flew-down, they continued to gobble, but they gobbled going-away from us. These gobblers obviously had a group of hens moving with them and couldn’t care less about my calling. The situation was made even worse when the birds started leaving the property where we had permission to hunt. On the morning of our hunt, we heard a turkey gobbling from a roost a long distance away from us. Since the birds already had left, we decided to go to the bird we’d heard at first light. We waited to hear him gobble again before we left the area, and finally at about 8:30 am, he cranked-up and started gobbling. Because he started gobbling at 8:30 am, I knew he was by himself and didn’t have hens with him. We took-off running toward that tom.

 Misty liked to shoot her 20-gauge CVA Optima Elite, and I had my 12-gauge Optima Elite. This gobbler was in a strut zone. We got down in a dry creek, and using that creek bank to keep the turkey from seeing us, we moved as close as we could to that turkey. The turkey was gobbling from some open timber, so we stopped about 200-yards short of where we thought the turkey was located. We came out of the creek bottom and sat-down right on the edge of the creek bottom. A drainage ditch was about 45-yards out in front of us. I’d never before hunted this piece of ground, but I was confident that we could call the turkey from across that ditch. I knew that if the turkey hung-up on the other side of the drainage ditch, he’d be too far for Misty to make a shot with that 20 gauge. Well, that’s exactly what the bird did.

 Once we set-up and started calling, I gave the turkey some excited cutting and yelping calls. As soon as I hit the turkey with those excited calls, he broke-out of strut and started running straight toward us. I could hear the turkey gobbling as he ran the 200 yards to reach the ditch. When the turkey reached 46-yards away from us, he stopped and started to strut and gobble. That bird strutted and gobbled his head off for 20 minutes. Because the bird was so close, I couldn’t do very-much calling. I did a little purring and soft yelping to make the turkey think I was further away than I really was and to encourage him to walk across that ditch. Finally, after about 30 minutes of strutting and gobbling, he dropped his strut and started walking toward the ditch. Once the turkey walked to the ditch, he vanished, which told me that the ditch was much deeper than I’d thought. When the turkey came across the ditch and reached our side, he was in clean, open woods at about 36-yards from us. For the gun Misty was shooting, I preferred to have the turkey within 30 yards, so this was further than I wanted her to shoot.

 The bird looked around for about 20 seconds, and when he didn’t see that hen, he knew something was wrong and gave an alarm putt. Misty and I were backed-up against a giant red oak. I know the turkey couldn’t see us, but he spotted something he didn’t like. When he gave the alarm putt and started making those quick steps to get away from us, I gave Misty the signal to shoot. Even though the bird was about 5-yards further away than I wanted Misty to shoot, I felt confident that she could make the shot. But when she fired, the shot didn’t come close to that turkey. It didn’t even pepper him. She didn’t throw-up dirt in front of or behind the turkey. She didn’t even get close to him. The turkey made one more putt and then walked out of our lives.

 Although we didn’t harvest a turkey that morning we had a great hunt. Misty hasn’t stopped talking about that bird since that day. I remember the turkeys I’ve missed much-more vividly than the turkeys I’ve taken. If you enjoy turkey hunting, even if the hunt doesn’t end with a bird on your shoulder or in your turkey vest, you still can have a great day of turkey hunting.

 To learn more about High Cotton Hunting, visit www.highcottonhunting.com.

Editor’s Note: CVA Pro Tony Smotherman, co-host of “Moultrie’s Hit List” on the Outdoor Channel, has had a phenomenal turkey season this year. “This has been my best turkey season ever, even though we’ve had a lot of rain in the South,” Smotherman says. This week, Smotherman will share the tactics he used at the 10th Annual Tennessee Governor’s One Shot Turkey Hunt to take turkeys with his 12-gauge CVA Optima Elite.  

 Each year, I host the Annual Tennessee Governor’s One Shot Turkey Hunt in Pulaski, Tennessee, held during the early season, when taking a tom is tough, because the gobblers still are with hens. Even though I host the hunt, I also get to hunt with local guides in the area. The hunt’s generally held the second weekend of Tennessee’s turkey season, usually the first weekend of April. Seventy-five hunters participated in this year’s hunt. There are always three of us on the hunt – me, a sponsor and a local guide who knows the land and can show us where to hunt. Having to hunt with this number of people makes hiding and being stealthful much-more difficult.

 This year we’d roosted birds the night before we’d planned to hunt and returned to this same spot the next day before daylight. So-many hens were in the region that when the gobblers flew from the roost, they went in the opposite direction from us with the hens. We had to be back to check-in by 5:00 pm, so we hunted most of the day. Every turkey we tried to hunt would give us a courtesy gobble when we called to them but then would move-off with hens. However, at 3:00 pm, we went to a new section of land where there were a number of hens and used our Alpen binoculars to search for the turkeys. As we drove through the property, we saw strutting gobblers everywhere, but they all had hens with them. So, we went through the timber to prevent the turkeys from seeing us and reached a spot where the timber grew out into the hayfield. When we reached the edge where the timber met the hayfield, we started calling to the gobblers we could see. I used a Knight & Hale Ol’ Yeller Sla-Tek friction call. Our game plan was to try not to call the gobblers, but instead to call the hens to us, hoping they’d bring the gobblers with them. The group of turkeys we were calling-to had five hens and four longbeards. After an hour of calling, we got two hens to come out of the flock and walk 250 yards to us. They passed out of sight, so, we started cutting and yelping loudly. Then two of the gobblers started coming toward us. Before we started calling, we put-out a Knight & Hale Pretty Boy and Pretty Girl decoy. To reach us, the two gobblers had to come over a rise, and we were down the hill from this rise. We watched the gobblers’ tail feathers coming over the hill, before we saw the gobblers. As soon as the gobblers topped the hill and spotted our decoy in full strut and the hen sitting beside it, they dropped their struts and came running, shoulder to shoulder, as hard as they could straight to us. The turkeys ran so hard and fast that they came to within 10 yards before the sponsor and I touched our triggers. Both those turkeys folded like envelopes. These 2-1/2-year-old birds had 10-1/2-inch beards and about 1-inch-long spurs, and probably were hatched from the same nest.

 I’ve seen television shows before where toms came-in and jumped-on the decoy, trying to tear it up, and I’ve been on hunts where gobblers have seen my decoys and come to them. But this is the first time I’d ever seen two gobblers running full-out across 150 yards as hard as they could to reach the decoy and attack him. I was amazed at how fast those turkeys could run and how effective those decoys were at bringing-in the turkeys. I learned from this hunt that knowing how to call turkeys was important, but to be successful, you had to understand how to set-up on turkeys, so they would come to you. I learned that when the gobblers wouldn’t come-in to you, if you could call-in the hens, you’d have a much-better chance of calling-in the gobblers. I also learned that decoys out in front of you meant that as soon as you saw that the turkeys would come-in to you, you needed to get-up your gun as those turkeys would come-in fast. When you’re shooting the 12-gauge CVA Optima Elite, you quickly and effectively can put-down a turkey.