With spring turkey season winding down, Peyton Claterbaugh, 26, wanted to take a break from his day job of performing long-distance, critical-care air transports and try something he’d never done before.
Despite being a seasoned hunter for most of his life, he and turkey hunting had simply never crossed paths. But trail cameras on his uncle’s ranch in China Spring, a town just outside Waco, had been calling his name all spring.
After finally biting the bullet and making the drive down south, he quickly became accustomed to the throes of turkey hunting, as his first evening featured a whole lot of action without any success.
“It was a pretty warm weekend, so we decided to go down by the creek to get closer to the water,” he said. “We found a really nice gobbler by himself off in the trees. We were able to call him in pretty close but just could not get a shot.”
The following day, he was taking groceries into the house when his uncle saw a gobbler and two hens 150 yards away through the window.
Wearing a T-shirt and basketball shorts, Claterbaugh grabbed his shotgun and scurried outside. Meanwhile, his cousin had picked up a box call and circled around the pasture to a tree he managed to climb to get out of sight.
Claterbaugh positioned himself between his cousin and his quarry, but the communication was short-lived before the bird started running 60-70 yards off, inducing an unusually unsure shot from such an experienced hunter.
“This was my first turkey hunt ever,” he said. “Looking back, it probably wasn’t a great shot, but I trusted myself with it in the moment and ended up missing.”
Things only heated up from there. What started as a spontaneous decision quickly evolved into an hour-long, fast-paced, run-and-gun turkey hunt.
The gobbler, accompanied by the same two hens Claterbaugh’s uncle first spotted, took off in a full sprint before flying over the fence line toward a barn.
Before further spooking the birds, the two devised a plan on the spot.
“We tried to kind of cut him off in some cedars,” Claterbaugh said. “I was able to pin him down in this group of trees where I could see him and he could see me and we’re kind of pushing each other back and forth to the right and to the left.”
After an especially mobile game of cat and mouse, a shot opportunity presented itself, but it would only work if the bird took one more step to clear a cedar tree.
“At 30-40 yards, I felt better about this shot. Sure enough, I could see him start to step into that opening and that was it.”
Having trekked across the property, they ended up closer to a cabin belonging to the father of his uncle’s wife that shares the same land.
It wasn’t until he made a call to share the good news that he realized his first gobbler was particularly special.
“He’d seen us running around the property in shorts and T-shirts chasing after something with shotguns,” he said laughingly. “He’s pretty avid turkey hunter so when he dropped the tailgate down, he said, ‘Hey this thing’s got four beards!’”
Claterbaugh replied, “Is that good?”
