A Bear Grizzly, three broadheads, and no idea what I was doing
I had no mentor for my first hunt. Nobody to teach me. No one who hunted at all.
Just a Bear Grizzly recurve I had bought on a whim, a pack of three broadheads, and some arrows that weren't even trimmed to the right length.
I started shooting every single day. Not because anyone told me to. Just because something in me knew it mattered. A couple months into it the thought hit me clean and simple. At some point my life or my family's life might depend on knowing how to do this. Knowing how to shoot a bow. Knowing how to kill an animal and bring it home.
So why wait for someday. There is no better time to start than now.
I took that bow, those three broadheads, and arrows that were the wrong length, and I said to hell with it.
No mentor. No experience. I went anyway.
An hour and a half drive and a field full of turkeys
I drove an hour and a half to a spot I had scouted from the truck window, a field where I had seen turkeys working the edges before. Beside that field sat a stand of cedars. I had some cheap camo, a Realtree hoodie, some Realtree long underwear of all things, and a hat from Cabela's. That was the whole kit.
I carried that bow with no quiver. Just held the arrows against it in my hand, which is about the dumbest thing a man can do, but I did not know any better and nobody was around to tell me.
The flock was out in that field. Jakes, hens, and one big tom a hundred yards out, twenty yards off the wood line. I figured if I could get into those cedars and close that gap, I might have a shot.
So I started creeping through the woods in the direction I thought would intercept them.
Something woke up
That is when it happened. Not the shot. I was not even close to that yet. Just the feeling of sneaking, of creeping toward an animal I meant to eat with a tool I had spent months practicing with.
Something woke up inside me. I realized this was absolutely awesome. The feeling of being a kid again, growing up in the woods. Best feeling I had ever had, and nothing had even happened yet.
I kept going. Slower now. Found a gap in the brush and there they were. I was in the right spot. I had crept the right way. About fifteen birds. Jakes, hens, and a big tom, maybe twenty yards out.
I got behind a big old maple tree and went still. I started preparing, even though I did not really know what I was preparing for. I had only trained for twenty yard shots. I did not know any better.
Then the hen started walking toward me.
She came in clucking, those soft probing clucks that mean something feels slightly off but not enough to spook. She walked right past me, two yards in front of that tree. I knew the moment she and the rest of the flock passed and turned back I would have my window.
Eight feet
The hen walked by first. Then the tom followed.
I had an opening through a gap in the trees, still tucked back in the brush. I drew that bow back. And there the tom was, right in front of me. Not twenty yards. Not even close to twenty yards.
Eight feet away.
My first hunt ever. I had stalked a flock of fifteen birds from a hundred yards out to eight feet without them ever knowing I was there.
I released.
The arrow hit a sapling maple I never even saw, because every bit of my focus was locked on that tom. An inch and a half thick, and the broadhead buried into it solid. Stuck. The bird took off running.
I grabbed my last arrow. Drew it. Tried for a shot on a bird that was already moving away from me. I had never practiced moving targets. It went exactly how you would think.
I did not get the bird.
But I got eight feet from a flock of turkeys on my very first hunt, with no mentor, no experience, and gear I had barely figured out how to use. And in that moment I knew something I did not know an hour before.
I could be a hunter. I could actually make this happen.
The next year, I connected. First bird down.