We parked, and began to walk through the woods, giving an occasional owl hoot to try to get a turkey to shock gobble.  With heavy winds and occasional bursts of rain, I wasn't confident that we would hear any gobbles, and not surprisingly, we didn't.  We walked to the back gate without hearing a single turkey, so we turned around and headed back to the truck, stopping for about an hour with each of us sitting in a separate deer blind just hoping to catch a stray turkey wandering in the logging road.

By 10:00, it was clear that nothing was happening on this lease this morning, so I suggested that we go ahead and get lunch, then head over to the Briarpatch lease and see if anything was in the fields.  We had a quick lunch of fried chicken in nearby Heath Springs, then drove over to the little lease.  We parked high on a hill in the middle of our cutover that overlooks one of our fields, some 500 yards away.  Almost immediately, we could see that there were turkeys in the field.

Using his binoculars, Ted said that he thought that they were hens.  Thinking that there might be some gobblers in the area, we quickly formulated a plan of attack.  We couldn't take the easy way and walk down the road to the field; we'd be in view of the turkeys the whole time if we did that.  Instead, we chose to head straight down to the creek bottom, pushing our way through the jumble of the cutover. 

I put us on a path that pointed us away from the field, trying to get some distance between us and the turkeys for the first couple of hundred yards.  Once we made it to the 75 yard wide river bottom, we got as close as we could to the creek itself.  This would let us make our way to the back of the field, far from where the turkeys were feeding.  We made our stalk quickly but quietly, and soon found ourselves on the edge of the field.

Looking intently through the deadfalls, I could see that at least one turkey, a hen, was still in the field.  Suddenly Ted hissed, "There's one right there!"  I suddenly saw a bird in plain view.  "It's a jake," Ted said.  I wasn't sure; I couldn't see even a puff of beard.  When the turkey looked away, I pointed at a patch of briars and said, "let's get behind that.  It's our best bet to get right up on them."

When we had the chance, we moved into position, Ted on my right, me right in close to the briars.  I thought we had made our move completely undetected, then, suddenly, I saw four heads craned high staring at us.   My shotgun was instantly in position, and I whispered to Ted to be careful when he shot, we were standing side by side and needed to keep this situation safe.

As the turkeys stared at us, Ted said, "they're gonna run." 

"I'm shooting," I said, and immediately fired at the nearest male.  He collapsed in a heap on the ground.  Ted took a step into the field and shot at a bird that I couldn't see.  When it was safe, I moved into the field and saw two birds on the ground, and the rest were leaving the area at a dead run.  I kept my gun trained on my turkey, making sure he didn't get up again.  Unfortunately, Ted's did.

"He's running," Ted yelled.  I looked up in time to see that his bird had gotten up and was halfway across the field.  Ted took a shot at him and yelled "shoot him, shoot him" to me.  I led the running bird as much as I could and hauled down on the trigger, but the turkey never flinched.  Ted stood stock still in surprise.  I could still see his bird running for the thicket.  "There he is, chase him, chase him," I yelled.  Ted took off, but the bird was gone.

Mine was down for good, and 100 yards up the power lines I could see the turkeys crossing.  "There they are, can you do it?" I asked Ted.  We were both exhausted from our long stalk, but Ted was game.  We started up the hill and were soon out of breath.  The turkeys were gone.

"Tell you what," I wheezed.  "I'll go down and get my bird and bring him up here.  You walk the wood line and see if you can find any sign of yours.  We'll meet back here shortly." 

By the time I got back up the hill, it was over.  Ted could find no sign of his turkey, and there was no point in looking further.  From the way he was running, he was probably halfway to North Carolina by that time.  And so, although we were both disappointed that Ted didn't get his bird, both of our hearts were still pounding from the excitement of the hunt.  This was, unquestionably, the most exciting turkey hunt I've ever been on.