Editor’s Note: One of the reasons I enjoy turkey hunting so much is because every turkey hunt is so different perhaps due to the location, the person I’m hunting with, the particular bird I’m trying to take or my learning something new that I’ve never expected to learn. I’ve also realized through my almost 60 years of turkey hunting that I don’t have to harvest a gobbler to have a successful, memorable turkey hunt.

This trip was to be my first Merriam’s turkey hunt and my first turkey hunt at altitude. I had a guide who knew the property, and we went out before daylight to listen for a gobble. The sun was already up before we heard the first turkey gobble. When that bird talked to the sky, I took off running just like I had done many times before in my home state of Alabama. However, after I had sprinted for about 70 yards, I went down on my knees and hands and panted like a thirsty dog that badly needed a drink of water. I had forgotten that there was a lot less oxygen at altitude than at sea level where I hunted at home. My guide came walking up to me and said, “Mr. John, I believe we’ll get to that turkey faster if you’ll walk a lot slower.” I had to agree. Finally when I could breathe again and stand-up on my weak and wobbly legs, I looked at the beauty of the mountains and the thick evergreens and the splendor of the rocks and boulders and said to my guide, “Bubba, I understand now why the Good Lord gave you folks all this beautiful countryside and scenery up here in the mountains.” He looked at me, smiled and asked, “Why do you think He did that, Mr. John?” I answered “Well, He surely short-changed y’all on air.” We both laughed and heard the turkey gobble again.

Since the tom wasn’t far, we quickly set-up. In my haste, I failed to notice a small sapling about 5 feet in front of a tree I’d hurriedly sat down beside. With some soft calling, that big Merriam’s strutted out into a clear opening with grass no higher than his spurs. I already could smell that turkey cooking in the oven as I squeezed the trigger. But my longbeard took to the sky. Again, I searched for excuses that might be believable enough to hide my embarrassment, but found none. I couldn’t believe I’d missed that turkey out on that wide-open ground.

My guide said, “Sit down where you were sitting when you took the shot,” and I did. He told me to go through the motions of what I had to do to take the shot. So, I looked down my barrel, saw the little sapling in front of me and leaned to my left. “Well, there’s your problem,” my guide announced. I asked, “Okay, what’s my problem?” My guide replied, “You’re canting your gun. When you moved your gun around that little sapling, you rolled it off the pocket in your shoulder before you squeezed the trigger.”

Once I went through the motion again, I realized exactly what I had done wrong. I thought to myself, “I know how to correct this problem. I’ll bet I’m not the only turkey hunter that has canted his gun when he’s taken a shot at a turkey and missed.” So, when I returned home after finally bagging a Merriam’s gobbler, I took my shotgun to my gunsmith and asked him to drill and tap my receiver and mount me a riflescope on the gun. My gunsmith asked, “If you’re not going to be shooting 100 yards or more at a turkey, why do you need a riflescope?” I told him I wanted a 1X5 scope with crosshairs in it because if I canted my gun, I then could see that I was canting it. The crosshairs wouldn’t be straight in my scope.

Once I started hunting with my turkey gun with a riflescope on it many of my friends and family kidded me about it. However, the number of turkeys I missed in a season went down drastically, and as far as I know I was the first writer to publish an article in a national magazine on why to put a riflescope on a turkey gun. In those days, there wasn’t a word for turkey scope or red dot scope, and nobody ever had seen a scope on a turkey gun.

What I Learned from This Hunt:

* Most of the time when a turkey hunter misses a turkey that he should’ve shot, the problem is hunter error. None of the excuses that many of us like to use just don’t work when the turkey does fly.

* I needed to have a riflescope put on my turkey shotgun because it would be more accurate than a bead at the end of the barrel to decrease my misses and increase the number of turkeys that rode home with me.

* I realized I couldn’t run while hunting turkeys at a high altitude. That beautiful, inspiring  mountain scenery came at a price of providing much less oxygen than when hunting at or just above sea level.

* You can understand more about yourself and turkeys by hunting them.

To learn more about turkey hunting, check out John E. Phillips’s book, “Outdoor Life’s Complete Turkey Hunting,” at http://amzn.to/1fpP4Qu, and available in Kindle and print.

Tomorrow: Realize That a Successful Turkey Hunt Can Happen