A Rio for Dad

As a young man I found myself engulfed with everything the outdoors had to offer. I was lucky enough to live on a farm in northern Indiana where my dad helped the farmer raise pigs and worked the fields growing corn and soybeans.

Dad also worked a full time factory job, although farming was a full time seasonal job for him as well, and as myself and brothers got a little older we chipped in with things like bailing hay, and working the hogs.

My dad loves the outdoors as well, taking my 3 brothers and I fishing and camping every summer as far back as I can remember. As far as hunting goes, I think it was a way for him to escape the business of work and raising a family when he had the chance.

I remember sitting cross legged on the floor watching dad as he would prepare for a hunt. He would be sharpening broadheads for his aluminum arrows that he shot from that old left handed Pearson recurve, or measuring powder and forming his own lead round balls for his side lock muzzleloader he built from a kit. I was enthralled with all of the preparations, but as a very young boy I wasn’t old enough to go.

As I grew older I wanted to know more, I wanted to do more. Eventually he would take me and I would be the one to climb the ladder and hook the chain around the tree as he held the stand from falling. Or I would help brush in a spot that he had scouted hoping to ambush a deer with his recurve. I never actually deer hunted with dad as a boy, life got busy as us boys got older and dad worked more to make sure we had everything we needed. One Christmas at the age of 12 I got my first shotgun, a single shot 20g, and so it began! The following fall, loaded with a pocket full of 20g slugs and that little single shot, I was able to stalk up and kill my very first whitetail in one of those cornfields my dad worked so hard to grow. I remember the feeling of that little shotgun in my hand as if it were yesterday.

We didn’t have turkeys to hunt in my area growing up, and I remember actually seeing my first wild turkey at Salamonie Reservoir around 1992, about a year before our family moved everything to Tennessee for a better job opportunity for my dad. The same story followed my dad to Tennessee where he was engulfed in work and hunting was pushed to the back burner. I still had the passion, and was able to tag along with some buddies through high school and that kept the spark alive.

Fast forwarding a number of years, I had gotten bit by the turkey hunting bug. I was a young father at the time, but found friendship in a man who showed me the ropes and even called in my first turkey, a jake, that came in gobbling and putting on a show like he was the king of spring. I was hooked.

Time has a way of passing very quickly, and before I knew it my youngest daughter, 12 at the time, my dad and I, were sitting in a blind turkey hunting together. There were 3 generations of hunters sitting together when my dad killed his very first wild turkey, a curious jake that slipped ahead of all of his buddies to check out the decoys that were just down dad’s gun barrel. It felt like a weight was lifted as that jake hit the ground, having come full circle for me as now I was showing my dad the ropes.

This spring I got a call from a buddy in Texas about the chance to hunt some Rios on a beautiful Texas Ranch. I made some calls trying to set up a group hunt but the logistics just weren’t working for the group, so I called my dad. I told him to get his stuff together and that we were going to Texas to turkey hunt in just a couple of weeks.

After a 12 1/2 hour ride we rolled into camp ready for some action. Ricky was there to greet us, gave us the nickel tour and told us where to set up for the evening hunt. Like clockwork, that group of turkeys Ricky watched every day came right by the blind, the only problem was is that we had already left the blind for the evening, thinking that it was late and that the turkeys should have been there already. Well they roosted right where Ricky said they would, so we were right back in there the next morning. As luck would have it, they ended up flying down and going a different path that morning. We spent the day loafing at camp and doing some fishing in the stocked lake there at the ranch before settling back in that afternoon for an evening hunt.

That evening a lonesome hen was the first turkey to show, and she walked right past the blind as you hoped the gobbler would. It would be a couple long hours before anything else showed up, but we were pretty disappointed when we saw that the group was coming to roost well out of range as they circled in from below us like they had left that morning. Then I hear it, just a small cluck right over my left shoulder. I peeked out the small window of the blind just as he went into full strut not 20 yards away. I told dad he needed stand up for a shot out of the back of the blind. It was a quick scramble, but he was able to do just that and I watched as dad dropped the hammer on his very first longbeard, a Texas Rio that had almost given us the slip for the 3rd time! Since retirement, dad has had a bit more time on his hands and he and my mom have moved just down the road from me a bit.

Dad took his first whitetail with me just a few years back, a racked buck with a couple points on one side and 4 on the other. He hangs in dad’s man cave with the nickname 2x4, and he smiles every time I hear him recount that story. I believe this Rio Grande turkey story will get bigger every time he tells it as well, but that’s out what dads do!

Seeing him work so hard to make sure we always had what we needed has given me the drive to work hard and give him the chances to do the things that I love, and he seemingly never really had the time, but had the passion to do. I am grateful to give back a part of me to help him enjoy his retirement and pursue the dreams that he never got to fulfill and I can’t wait till our next adventure!

Rick Taylor -@Tntrkyhntr