My favorite miss story involved a clear cut turkey. He was on fire this particular morning and was trying to set the woods on fire with his gobbling. Pinpointing him was no problem as he had set up shop on a little knob and was telling the whole world about his lack of love life. Got to within 100 yards below him by following a creek but he never moved.

My Benelli had a quirk that is shared by many guns. It's point of impact was about 3 inches high. It killed turkeys but you needed to aim where the neck meets the body. I would roll birds with Federal #4's like no one's business and I had adjusted to the quirk.

After nearly an hour of him answering all the dirty hen talk I could muster, I resorted to low sweet talk. He ate that up also. My last trick was simply to shut up. That worked too. You could tell his gobbles were becoming more frustrated and I was giggling waiting for him to break. Well he finally broke and I heard a muffled gobble. He broke and was heading dead away.

I broke too and covered that 100 yards very quickly. Set up where he was strutting and gave a light 3 note yelp. He almost knocked my hat off with the triple gobble that he answered with. He was just over the ridge on a trail where they pulled timber up the hill. The only problem was a dead pine laying in the road about 30 yards away. That really wasn't a concern because I was going to shoot him if his head poked over that log.

The script went as planned and I saw a blue head peering over the log, looking for a hen. Put the bead on his head, which was the only part of the bird visible. Figured at that range he was a dead turkey. Well I cleared the air 3 inches over his head. Cussed the bird, cussed the gun and cussed myself. It does me a lot of good to remember the misses. Keeps my ego in check.