Thanks guys. The boys and I shoot a lot, mainly from the bench at targets or occasionally, ground squirrels. Cooper and Alex both really have gotten excited about hunting lately and both wanted to kill a turkey this year. We saw plenty last weekend but the gobblers weren’t responding to a call, so we tried to stalk them. Hard to do with three of us moving around.
Yesterday, we went to a different property that was much more open and made it easier to shoot at distance if necessary. We saw lots of Turkeys and had more than one opportunity. It’s pretty difficult to get a head shot when we’re spot and stalk hunting. As soon as they see movement, they’re running. We set up and called quite a bit but moved around a lot too. The weekend before we saw a pair of gobblers and tried the ole’ shoot on the count of three, we’ll kill them both! Nope! Let’s just say, it didn’t work out well, that’s another embarrassing story! Both birds ran away unscathed and the others we saw later in the day, never gave us a good shot.
Yesterday, I told the boys, whoever has a good shot, take it! This gobbler was walking away from us a bit, both of the boys had a good rest and before I thought either of them was going to shoot, Cooper let a slug fly. The gobbler took two or three steps and fell over dead. I had ranged the bird and told the boys he was at about 75yds. Coop aimed for the head, with all of our guns sighted in at 50yds, he hit a little low. No complaints though, I always tell them, a little low on a head shot is still a dead bird! Not a lot of expansion because of where the slug hit but the arteries in the neck and trachea were all severed. To say the boys were excited would be an understatement! It was definitely a great day!
So here’s the crazy part that I wanted to share…When we cleaned the bird, we noticed that the slug had gone in the turkey’s low neck, severed some major blood vessels, trachea and did quite a bit of damage. From there, the slug got to the back side of the neck and deflected downward between the skin and breast. We found the slug just under the skin, on the low breast near the top of the thigh. There was almost no damage anywhere but the neck. It looks like the slug just slid under the skin and came to rest down by the thigh, 10-12 inches from the POI. It was pretty cool to see and kind of investigate with the boys, just another part of the fun!
I’ve heard of things like this before, but what really surprised us is that the slug travelled so far from the POI with no damage to the breast meat at all. We really were pretty shocked when we found the slug.
Have a great afternoon.
Stoti
Below is the recovered slug, a Zan 33gr. fired from a .25 RAW HM1000x at 930fps. The gobbler was shot at about 75yds, took 3-4 steps, wobbled and fell over, dead.
