 Got my first gobbler since I returned to hunting this year after a ten year hiatus. Before that I hunted fifteen years, harvested lots of deer, but only one gobbler. I always told my former hunting partner to take the shot--he carried a .10 gauge!
We had been socked in with heavy fog until nearly lunchtime. We heard not a peep even after many stops until we were headed home. "Last call," my buddy said, stopping the truck. He gave a few cuts before my feet hit the ground, and suddenly spun around, his eyes big. He raised his arm straight up in the air and swung it down hard to the NE. "Gobble!" he mouthed, "Did you hear it?" I normally do, but not this time, since I was still behind the truck when he called. I grabbed my gun and loaded it, yanked my vest on, and we were off at a run up the grassy hill to a piney plateau. There we dashed as quietly as we could through knee-high grass to a pine tree thirty-five yards from an L-shaped knoll.
 My buddy yelped pleadingly, but the gobbler didn't respond. After about five minutes, he cut hard on a diaphragm. The gobbler thundered. My hunting buddy whispered, "Move your gun, he's coming in over there!" I moved my eyes and barrel and my buddy whispered again, "There he is! Take your safety off."
Then I saw the gobbler. I picked a hole in the brush and he stepped right into it and stopped. His head of Carolina blue was silhouetted, waiting, against vivid green foliage dotted with dogwoods in bloom.
I squeezed the trigger, Boom! and the gobbler went down. The load of Winchester' "Extended Range" number sixes had done the do. Ecstatic, we ran to the downed bird--it doesn't get much better than that.
"Congratulations!" my buddy said, and gave me a high five.
So, after fifteen years married to a hunter, and ten years divorced from the sport, the passion remains, but stronger. I no longer stand as a wife who hunts, but as hunter who happens to be a woman.
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