Kansas Hunting With YoungOutdoors

As turkey season here in Kansas draws to an end, we pay tribute to those of us "Hardcore" hunters that go to the very end.  Thomas Allen is one of those people.  Some of you may know the story of how Thomas and I met, but for those of you who don't just watch some of his videos from this 2011 Kansas Turkey hunts and you will.  To put it short our beginning started with hostility, but as the story goes... we end our season as new friends.  Thomas had hunted in Kansas during the beginning of our archery season, but just like all of us turkey hunters have experienced, he was unable to fill one of his season tags. Even after the choice words we had expressed with each other.. I offered Thomas my lending hand, and to my suprise he excepted.  After a few emails back and forth, Thomas and I made an agreement for me to guide him on a personal turkey hunt and film for him.  I was extremely excited about this opportunity, but weary due to the scheduled dates of the hunt.  He was coming for virtually the last weekend of the season.  As we all know late season birds are EXTREMELY difficult to hunt and sometime near impossible, however Thomas and I were confident that we would end up with a gobbler face down in the dirt.  The evening Thomas arrived, I settled him in his room at our lodge and we went around viewing some of the property that we would be hunting.  After a while of "decision" talking, we decided on a spot that the birds frequently visited throughout the day, and as we finished our conversation and parted ways for the evening, both of our hopes were high. After arriving at our lodge and picking up Thomas we headed out to our chosen spot and packed in for the morning.  With decoys out and a distant gobble heard, we were ready for the morning to begin.  After about an hour of sunlight we watched two hens work into the field we were sitting on.  One hen worked right into the Dave Smith and Zink Avian X decoys and payed no attention to the two men sitting 20 yards away in the Covert Command XL ground blind.  After what seemed like hours of waiting for ol gobby, we decided to change tactics and try to spot birds and get infront of their path.. Several attempts to close the deal on many different birds throughout the day not only left us tired but dropped our hopes of getting a bird.  That day we spoke to 2 local land owners that we had seen birds on and received permission to hunt their properties.  After scouting and working birds on all the land, we came up with a "fool proof" plan for the following morning.  We are now at May 28th... only 3 days from the end of the season and again we wake that morning with gobbler hopes in our head.  Unlike the following morning of only seeing a couple hens, this morning we bared witness to a over a dozen birds dropping out of roost with some nice longbeards in the mix.  We watched and worked them with the calls having gobblers cut us off in mid sentence, but alas they were not working to us.. After some quick deliberation we decided it was time to go after them.  We work our way over to a machine shed where we last saw them, but they were gone... after looking around we took off to a small hillside in hope they would be on the other side of them and as we work up the hill we see a lone hen.  She slightly spooks and goes down the opposite side and so with me on the camera and Thomas on the gun we make our way over the hill and sure enough there is Ol Mr. Redhead standing at 25 yards.  Thomas already had the gun mounted in anticipation and unloads a shot... behind him, after a quick reset here comes number two in the chamber... and drops him at roughly 35 yards.  10 1/8" beard and 1 1/4" spurs... what a bird.  To come away with a bird like this is great, but to do it with only 3 days left during season... you can't explain that.  Thomas and I shook hands as he drove back home to Iowa with a bird in hand, and I walk back to my lodge with a new friend.  This has been a great season... but a meeting like this makes this a season to remember.

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