u/Cory_aholic

So I’m picking up a couple decoys to try out these last couple weeks of the month. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and understanding turkey biology and how the season transforms from opening to close. From what I’ve gathered late spring would do well with relaxed and feeding hens.

I’ve seen Avian-X decoys in person and they look amazing, so realistic. For those seasoned hunters, would you find these models would work well for the late spring?

I’ve waited for the day that one of my children would start to show interest in things I’m interested in, hoping I should say. I’ve never been about turning my kids into small versions of me, I just want them happy and their own true selves.

I’ve been slowly getting back into hunting and my son asked me (8) a few weeks before spring turkey opened if we could go hunting together. I damn near cried.

So I turned it into a whole thing. Starting with gun and hunting safety. Then me and him went to Cabela’s and picked up a new shotgun for the occasion and we rattle can camo painted it together.

We’ve been out a couple times so far and he does so well, stays quiet, doesn’t move around a bunch and my personal favorite thing he’s been doing is asking questions, questions of what tracks are on the ground and what kind of trees were sitting under….my autistic hyper-fixation is the woods so it’s been a joy teaching him.

No bird yet (rainy days have been keeping them deep in the woods) but it’s been great getting up early with him and watching the sun rise out in nature.

Something I didn’t expect happened from all of this though, now my daughters want to come out hunting. My oldest wants to learn how to shoot and hunt herself.

Completely blew me away since normally my daughters show no interest in my hobbies and passions.

At the end of the day. I’m a proud dad. Being a dad ain’t easy and it’s usually thankless, but these last few weeks teaching my kids all these new things has been a blessing. Wouldn’t trade those hours for anything in the world.

I hope you all get to experience this some day.

P.S. we may not have got a bird yet, but my son and I did find a cow and coyote skull will out wandering one morning looking for a good tree to park under. Now my son wants to go bone and shed (antler) hunting. I’m for it.

Being out here really just takes the weight of the world off your shoulders and the brain quiets. It’s been about 15 years since I’ve hunted and I’m loving every minute of it.

Been a bust of a weekend for me and my boy, lots of rain, but we’re still keeping our fingers crossed. 🤞🏻

This is my new budget turkey gun. I love mossy oak bottomland so I made a similar type of rendition. Didn’t come out exactly how it did in my head, but I’m pretty pleased with it.

Also, in case anyone else wants to try I’ll include links to what I used.

This is the stencil kit I used.
https://a.co/d/0f2quWY4

This is the vinyl I traced on and cut out.
https://a.co/d/0gox4hrt

This is the precision hobby knife I used to cut out the designs.
https://a.co/d/07Z8GlPj

And I used Rust-Oleum flat camo paint in the following order.

-grey primer
Layer one: Flat Dark Earth (stripes)
Layer two: Khaki brown
Layer three/four: for this I went with a two tone approach and did the bottom half of the body in “Army Green” and the top half darker with “Deep Forest Green”

Hope this helps if anyone else is curious!

Locked and loaded and ready for season to open Friday.

Mav 88 in 12g, 28” barrel, with truglow gobble stopper and AT3 red dot mounted on a monstrum pic rail / shell holder. (the budget special build).

Ammo of choice Longbeard XR 1-3/4oz 5 shot

First pic is 20y and second 30y, been to long shooting a shotgun that I’m not even going to try further for humane reasons.

Forgot just how much a 12 kicks, fun guns though, a nice switch up from my ARs.