Almost Spurred by Thanksgiving Dinner

I was 15 years old, hunting turkeys with my dad in an almond orchard in Durham, right by Butte Creek. Shortly after the sun came up, we spotted a huge flock of turkeys, full of toms and hens, working their way across the orchard about 100 yards away. We had a box call, a hen decoy, and a jake decoy, and that was it. We didn’t have enough time to set up or anything. I started working the box call. If we were going to make the most of the opportunity, we didn’t have enough time to set up both decoys before we risked getting busted. My dad got the hen decoy set up, and then we each had to pick a tree to sit against. The jake never made it out of his hand. It didn’t look like they were paying any attention to us. So my dad grabbed the jake decoy and started bobbing it up and down, moving it around a little, trying to get something to see it. And then we saw it. One single tom broke off from the group. This thing was running full speed from 100 yards away, right at us, and he was going for the jake. I knew the moment was coming where I was going to have to take a shot. Little did I know, this was the difference between my dad getting attacked by a tom and the tom being dead on the ground. A few seconds went by and he kept closing the distance. My dad said, “Shoot it, shoot it.”30 yards. 20 yards. 15 yards. Bang. Luckily, I hit him, and that was the end of it. My dad mentioned afterward that he would have been spurred to death by that turkey if I hadn’t made the shot. He wasn’t joking, that tom was dead set on adding a new hen to his flock.