Pennsylvania Game News - May 2019 - 22

they'd placed in the field, Cole raised his
20-gauge Remington 870 pump.
The bird dropped before the sound
of his shot finished echoing through the
surrounding mountains.
It was 6:45.
While it was the fourth season Cole had
taken part in the Mentored Youth Hunting
Program, and he'd shot two gobblers previously, he couldn't wait to see his latest,
and biggest - a 19-pounder with a 10-inch
beard and 1¼-inch spurs.
"I handed the gun to Dad and ran out
to my bird," Cole said.
"Nothing can make a parent happier
than seeing their child in a moment like
that," Kevin said.
Cole no sooner attached his tag to the
gobbler's leg when a shot boomed farther
out the ridge, where Sam was set up along
the woods line, against a tree.
A minute later, he called with news
he'd taken a gobbler - a near 22-pounder,
with a 10-inch beard and 1¼-inch spurs.
With gobblers sounding off all around
him at first light, Sam began making noise
on his diaphragm call, and the gobbler
hurried to him.
"I've never had one come in so
quickly," he said.
Inside of 20 yards, Sam dropped the
bird with one shot from his Remington
12-gauge Model 1187 semiauto.
It was 7 o'clock.
Kevin and Cole packed up and started
hiking toward Sam.
And, as they did, a shot boomed from
Lloyd's position on the other side of the
ridge. Lloyd also had been greeted by
gobbles from several birds soon after he
got situated in his blind.
Before long, one responded to his calling, and came to him on the run. Lloyd
raised his old Remington 12-gauge Model
1100 semiauto, spotted the 5½-inch beard
22

and dropped the 15-pound jake.
Having taken an 8-point buck with an
18-inch inside spread with his crossbow,
then a 150-pound bear the previous fall,
both very near this spot, the harvest
clinched Lloyd's Triple Trophy.
But the hunt meant so much more.
"It was a special day hunting with
my son, grandson and great grandson,"
he said.
Cole and his uncle headed back to the
cabin, where Lloyd was waiting for them.
Kevin, who after mentoring Cole could
now try for a gobbler of his own, went
back to the blind where Cole had filled
his tag.
Over the next several hours, Kevin
scratched intermittently on his box call
and, finally, at 11:30, a bird gobbled about
100 yards away.
Kevin yelped again, then set the call
down and shouldered his Remington
12-gauge 1187 semiauto.
The tom slowly made its way in front
of the blind, taking the same route that
Cole's gobbler had, and Kevin downed
the 15-pound jake with a 5-inch beard
with one shot.
"I could not have been happier with the
outcome of the morning," he said.
While the property had been good to
the family, and a few times two Weavers had taken gobblers on the same day,
they'd never gone four for four.
"And with Grandpa Lloyd being 87, it
might never happen again," Kevin said.
Cole said it was a morning of hunting
he'd never forget.
"I was thankful for the opportunity to
spend time with my family," he said. "I
also found it funny that my dad got the
smallest turkey."
It was no small feat, though, what the
Weaver family accomplished on the 2018
spring gobbler season opener.
Pennsylvania Game News - May 2019

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