Whenever she’s asked, I’ve never tried to hide it from her – I’ve always been very up front and honest about where her food comes from.  I didn’t lie to her when she asked about the cute, little, dead bunny on the cover of the NRA American Hunter magazine, and I’ve always been  honest with her when it comes to the origination of her food – whether it’s chicken nuggets from McDonald’s, or cheese inside her quesadilla, I’ve always been open, direct and straight-forward.

On the other side of that, I’ve always been very open with her about hunting, too.  She knows that we kill deer and turkeys, and that they then become food.  I’ve never tried to shelter her from anything just because it involves a dead animal, and we’ve never sugar coated the hunting experience when discussing it with her either; we just really want her to be aware of the entire hunting process, and how it ultimately provides food for the table.

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Note: SimplyOutdoors TV Episode 5 is here.  Click here to check it out!

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Turkey season came…….and it went.

I loved every minute I got to spend in a blind with my wife, and I even managed to head out a few times by myself, but turkey season just had a really weird feeling to it this year.  I’m not sure if it was the steady rain we seemed to have, or if it had something to do with how busy I’ve been with other things, but it definitely was different.

The season wasn’t a complete bust though, as Jeff got to share in Ashley’s successful hunt; he got to take Sydney and her dad on their first turkey hunt ever; and, between him and one of his buddies, they managed to get my cousin Ron his first turkey as well – an awesome spot and stalk adventure, which Jeff got to witness through a pair of binoculars, and which was captured on film.

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For those of the SimplyOutdoors’ crew, who haven’t bagged a turkey yet, there is still one weekend left.  But, as you can see below, many in the SimplyOutdoors camp have already been successful.  Enjoy the pics from this season (and hopefully there will be more pictures to share come Tuesday).

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While I was camping, Jeff and our cousin, Ron, were out looking for turkeys.  And for good measure, they took Jeff’s friend Steve Richardson along with them (he had some “new” property they could hunt).

After hearing what Jeff described as “100″ gobbles, finally a nice Tom flew down, but started to head in the opposite direction.  He then flew into an open field, where they decided to try to take another shot at him.  The bird then made an adjacent farmer’s property, and after gaining permission to go after the wary gobbler, Ron and Steve decided to belly crawl through the open field, in the hopes of getting Ron his first real opportunity at a bird.

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Unfortunately, we were sitting in a ground blind on a property where turkeys tend to only show themselves in the morning.  It’s one of those locations which, if you don’t have a turkey in front of you within the first couple hours of light, it’s just simply not going to happen – and we were already well into our second hour, with only one hen to show for our efforts.

The curse appeared to still be in effect.

I’ve been trying to get my wife a bird – heck, any big game animal for that matter – for the last few years now, and the scenario that was playing out this morning was a scene we had witnessed many times before:  we set up a ground blind in an area where turkeys normally appear – and where many have been taken before – we sneak in undetected, we call, we have birds answering us from the roost, and then nothing happens.

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