My First Turkey With a Pistol

Shortly after I purchased a .44, I received a phone call from a friend of mine in West Texas with too many turkeys to shake a stick at and he invited me over to give them a try.
I thought the turkey would be a great first animal to take with it, because it is none too hardy and I was unsure of the .44’s power on a tougher big game animal. I headed to the range with some .44 Specials to try since they would be more than sufficient for turkey. I was pleased with their lack of recoil – I could watch the bullets poke holes through the paper in the scope. But I also learned that point of impact at 50 yards was 10-12” low. This was unacceptable so I opted to shoot the .44 magnums at turkey.

I arrived at his camp around 2 pm and he quickly put me in the blind as dusk was soon to come.

This particular blind was about 12 feet off the ground, fully enclosed with windows 18” wide and 8” high to shoot through. These windows would be great for a rifle but were quite a challenge for a pistol. Balancing the bottom of the pistol’s frame on the windowsill would bump the scope against the top of the window from recoil. Resting the end of the barrel on the window sill caused the gun to be very unstable with nothing but my hand supporting the handle’s bottom. I created a solution by unfolding a second chair and using the back of that chair to support the handle on the pistol. Because room was limited, I guessed which window I might get a shot through and setup on the front window facing the feeder.
As soon as I had sort of figured out how I was going to take a shot, I looked up and the sky was black with what looked like silent B-52 bombers. They flew in from the West, dark blobs, featureless two-dimensional shapes contrasting against the orange/pinkish colored clouds. I had never seen the air filled with birds so large, so close. I’d been in the blind less than 30 minutes!
As they landed, they came down on the road in front and to the right of the blind. The turkeys in front of the blind hit the ground running towards the feeder, around 90 yards away. The ones to the right found the few kernels I had sprinkled earlier on the road. “Hmm, what now?” I thought. I eased the pistol up to the windowsill ever so slowly. The sunlight shone iridescently on the turkeys’ feathers as they moved about. There were so many of them. Eyes were everywhere, with all the birds either pecking kernels of corn or, with their heads upright, looking intently for any sign of a predator. Their big black bodies contrasted with the tannish-colored terrain so characteristic of the West Texas soil. Gobblers were easily distinguished from the hens at this distance owing to their increased height, reddish heads standing out from the blue-head hens and their small beards poking out of their breasts. I didn’t see any large toms, but to be honest, I wasn’t looking around a whole lot, as I was very focused on the 15-20 birds to the right of my blind. Of course, the “chair back rest” was set up on a different window entirely and moving the chair when the birds were this close was out of the question.

Finally, I got the pistol up on the windowsill and it seemed at this range, I couldn’t miss. I steadied the barrel’s end on the windowsill, and leaning my leg at a funny angle, managed to compose a somewhat steady aim to take the shot from. A large jake finally separated from the drove far enough to allow a shot. As I pulled the trigger, all the birds flopped up in the air and they traded places. Another jake landed where this jake had been, as I obviously missed. Before I could reflect on what had happened, the trigger was cocked and I was holding the pistol one-handed, steadying the pistol’s butt with my other hand. Now, I had never shot this pistol one-handed and was half expecting it to jump from my hand at the shot. However, I was going to take advantage of this second opportunity and if I had to literally shoot the pistol out of my hand in order to kill a turkey, that’s what I was going to do. Doubly focused, I squeezed the trigger in a relaxed grip until the boom surprised me, the pistol reared my wrist to a 90 degree motion, but remained in my hand. The jake flopped clumsily out of the road behind a cedar bush and the drove had obviously had enough and left as quick as they had come.
Quickly I scurried down the ladder, hit the ground and barreled for the cedar that had swallowed my turkey. On the back side, I found him, lifeless. I literally jumped up and down on the ground, doing a solo celebration for my first big game animal taken with a .44 pistol. More importantly, I discovered that I could re-experience the “firsts” of hunting – my first turkey, my first doe, my first hog, my first buck, etc. I was also thankful for a second shot and doubly thankful that it had connected, knowing how important confidence was in hunting. Imagining how I would have felt if I had missed that second shot, made me all the more grateful for taking this animal. We had fried turkey breast that night for supper, my bullet having severed his neck above the breast, missing the meat completely. And it was delicious.