October Barneveld Trip 2006

This was the first year in many that this trip did not coordinate with a Zone T gun deer hunting season so the quarry was turkeys first, everything else second. Unfortunately, the turkey thing didn't work out but in about twenty minutes following the morning turkey hunt, the team of Rob, Chris and James bagged four squirrels. In four hours that morning, Devon had recorded one squirrel kill (but did get to shoot his gun 13 times) . Add one rabbit shot on Saturday and the weekend was a quality small game trip, but no big game.

This year's funny story is about Robert Vater Sr.. We were lucky enough to receive a great tip from our host Dale Theobald as to when and where the turkeys would be showing up on the flat on Saturday afternoon. We were to expect the turkeys between 3 & 5 pm. You'd expect we'd all be alert and prepared during those hours, but no. Snoozy (Dad), decided to lay down in his turkey blind and "rest his eyes" a little bit. Unfortunately, shortly after doing so, his nap was rudely interrupted by James' calling. Dad's thoughts, which he shared with us were "Geez, James, you're calling too much. You're going to scare off any turkeys in the area." The funny thing is, the calls he heard were really the turkeys passing about 5 yards outside of his tent. The turkeys then headed out to the field and down the woodline when James lined one up in the sights and pulled the trigger. Click. Crap. Eject. Turkeys look. Turkeys run. James shoots. Wakes up Dad. Turkeys get away because James is a horrible shot. Dad looks outside of tent. Dad still doesn't realize those turkeys had passed right by him. We let him know after dark. "Shucks" he says. For dinner, intead of Pizza Hut, we hit Country Kitchen in Dodgeville. (We're pretty sure that's because Dad didn't want Devon consuming several glasses of Mountain Dew at dinner.) Then we returned to the Dodgeville Hyatt (also known as the Pines Motor Lodge and slept like babies. James didn't snore at all (regardless of what everyone else says) and Sunday morning we landed our January squirrel dinner.