By Nick Wade, Erie, Pennsylvania
Even if you are not a golfer you know that a hole in one is something that most golfers never experience because the odds against it are very high, not to mention everything must be perfect.  Each turkey season in Pennsylvania invites nearly 230,000 hunters the opportunity to hit the woods in pursuit of the elusive wild turkey.  Not many, if any, hit the woods expecting what my father-in-law, Jeff Lyon, and I were given the opportunity for a double.

Although I saw the flock of 15 or so to the roost the day before the season opener, I never in a million years expected to both harvest our birds together, and if the memories were not enough we got a good laugh out of our hunt.  When I know where birds are sleeping the day before a hunt I can be assured to definitely lose some sleep and I definitely did.  I laid in bed watching the hours go by but it didn’t matter how little sleep I got I was going to absolutely wired when the alarm went off indicating the fun was about to begin.

When we tiptoed our way to roughly 50 yards from the creek sides trees I saw them roost in the previous night we hunkered down and tried to envision which way they would go when they hit the ground and set up accordingly.  It was still very dark but we felt we had a good position for me to call and Jeff to be the shooter.  We both found trees wider than our frames and we were ready; I with my Mossberg 500 with a XX-turkey choke and Jeff with his full choke Ithaca 20-guage that his father gave him.

As daylight slowly arrived Jeff scanned the treetops for turkey silhouettes while I was busy fighting off vicious mosquitoes.  I noticed he was making hand gestures to me that I could not make out because it was not yet light enough.  A few minutes later I finally saw him pointing straight above my head, come to find out we had posted up immediately under about 5 of the
birds, quite the little predicament I got us in to but I knew we were going to have some fun no matter what.

When my few soft kee-kee run calls began to create some activity in the treetops I knew we were going to have to bust them up as soon as they hit the ground or we were not going to have a chance at harvesting one.  That is exactly what we did, when the last few turkeys left the roost I motioned to Jeff that we were going to bust them up and all it took was Jeff standing up and they all fled in different directions..that was exactly what we wanted.

As they began to regroup we noticed they were traveling right in toward the back yard of someone’s house but as we watched they entered into another section of woods with a deep ravine.  As we watched them call and gobble in attempt to regroup, we tried to head them off but we were on the opposite side of the ravine and could not get across to the other side undetected or at least we didn’t want to risk it.  I began calling to them once we found a good spot to post up and sure enough they came right in, it was almost as if they were remote controlled.  When a group of about five birds came right in to us we each took claim to which one we were going to go for and then I began the countdown; 3..2..1..boom-boom; it was our first double and the most memorable hunt of my entire life. It didn’t matter at that point if one or even both of us missed, we were blessed with that opportunity which is still to this day unbelievable.  Luck would have it that we both were able to tag a bird.  I have had a ton of exciting hunts in my life but that by far was my favorite.