Seems like I learn another lesson every time I try to photograph a turkey hunt. Photographing turkey hunts without screwing up the kill is tough. This morning I was hunting with a friend who hasn't gotten a kill yet this year. He was bound and determined to draw blood today. On our first setup the weary tom avoided us. We heard him gobble again and circled around for a better ambush point. Somewhere between setups, my autofocus button got switched off. Usually, this wouldn't be a problem, but not today. I often shoot manual focus turkey hunting because of all the limbs. I normally have plenty of time to get my monopod adjusted, get seated comfortably, and then check all my settings while we wait for the bird to do his thing. After running a mad dash to the second setup, I was placing a 1.4 converter on as my buddy was setting up his bmobile decoy. He dropped down the decoy, hit a cluck, and dang if the bird wasn't 50 yards from us on the other side of some thick brush. We hurriedly scrambled to get setup. In all the commotion I ended up right in front and beside my buddy, with his rhino choke over my left shoulder and pointed at the decoy which was only 12 yards from us. By the time I got dropped down to one knee, I looked up and saw the tom running a full sprint towards the deke, in full strut. There he was in all his glory. I had part of the deke in frame, the morning sun was gently sidelighting the scene with wondrous glory. His feathers and beard were shimmering beautiful hues of blue, red, and green. I could already read the text on the magazine cover I was about to shoot. Adrenaline shot through my veins as I pushed the shutter to aquire focus. Click, Click.....
OMG OMG Holy Crap. Here I sit with no gloves, face mask half on and covering one eye, my camera on manual focus, with a tom 12 yards away, full strut, and now looking directly at me. Panic set in. Sweat beaded up on my forehead, and my stomach knotted. What to do? I can't screw this up for my buddy. If I do, he might just shoot me instead. Only thing I could think of was to slowly hang my head and cover my left ear. BOOM.
I looked at my buddy and yelled "F@CK" as loud as I could. He was like what? Did I blow your ear out? Are you shot? I got him! I didn't miss!
I said nope, I did.
Oh well, you win some and you lose some, but in the end your better off anyway. You better bet I'll be ready next time one sneaks up on me. And we still get to eat some fry meat anyhow.
"The Busted Cover Shots"
"The Happy Ending"
~Shelby
