Turkey
My spring turkey season this year was eventful. I was only able to hunt MO so here’s the story Opening morning – nada. Not even a far-off gobble. Just nothing. Tuesday morning I walked to a spot that I had watched gobblers strut on several mornings. I got in there good and early and set up. I should mention that starting Sunday afternoon I was experiencing discomfort in my chest that I attributed to a gas bubble or some kind of indigestion issue as I had experienced heart burn most of my adult life. The discomfort came and went but was little more than an annoyance. I had a 3/4-mile walk into the my hunt area Tuesday morning and had to stop several times to catch my breath. This should have triggered alarm bells but did not. After sitting down I felt great and when a tom started gobbling on roost around 200 yards away I felt even better. I was pretty certain I was setup where this particular gobbler wanted to be so I waited until he flew off roost before doing any calling. It didn’t take much. He came straight in gobbling the entire way, strutting probably too, before strutting right into my decoy spread of two hens and a jake. He strutted directly to the jake before flogging and spurring it, knocking the decoy over in the process. That was pretty much it for this gobbler. I sat there after shooting, enjoying the morning for a time before grabbing up my gear and the gobbler and heading back to the truck. I had to stop several times on the way back to catch my breath but felt pretty good after getting there and driving back to the house. Felt good enough in fact that I headed over to my local lake for some crappie action. I managed to catch my limit in a little under two hours and had no trouble walking back up a hill to my truck carrying all my gear plus a limit of fish. Later that evening when I tried to go to bed the discomfort in my chest became a bit more pronounced and made it hard to sleep. I ended up sleeping in my recliner but was now considering the very real possibility that I might be in some trouble. To make this already long story short, I ended up in the hospital ICU Wednesday night before going in Thursday morning for an angiogram. 99% blockage in one artery and 83% in another resulted in two stents. No heart attack and no damage to my heart so recovery wasn’t bad but it did wreck the rest of my MO turkey season.
