THE FLIP SIDE: Fourth Gobbler The Charm For Teen

Turkey Hunt Completes Grand Slam

Natalie Akers with the Shiloh Christian School trap shooting team fires at a flying clay target during practice on Saturday near Hogeye. Fifty-eight students from sixth grade through high school make up the shooting team.
Natalie Akers with the Shiloh Christian School trap shooting team fires at a flying clay target during practice on Saturday near Hogeye. Fifty-eight students from sixth grade through high school make up the shooting team.

Spending spring break in the high desert isn’t every teenager’s idea of a big time.

That’s where Elisa Daniel of Rogers elected to spend her spring break, hunting wild turkeys in New Mexico with her dad, Jim Daniel.

The father-daughter hunting team has seen a good bit of these United States in the grand pursuit of gobbling birds. Elisa, 16, bagged her first wild turkey in 2008 when she was 11.

She didn’t realize then that she was on her way to accomplishing one of turkey hunting’s premier goals, the wild turkey grand slam.

Golf has its hole in one, baseball the no-hitter and hockey has its hat trick.

To score a coveted grand slam, a hunter bags all four species of wild turkey that are common in the United States. Elisa, a student at Benton County School of the Arts, completed her grand slam this year when she squeezed the trigger on the Merriam’s species during spring break in northeast New Mexico.

The pair have logged hundreds of miles chasing wild turkeys from the mountains out West to the lowlands of south Florida.

The grand-slam journey began in Arkansas where Elisa killed her first gobbler during the 2008 youth turkey hunt. It’s held each spring the weekend before the regular spring turkey season opens.

Youths accompanied by an adult get to shoot. The adult can only watch and coach. Elisa bagged her bird, the Eastern species of wild turkey, on public land near Pelsor.

On that hunt, the two set up a hen decoy that got a gobbler so worked up the turkey seemed to wear blinders.

“It was so focused on the decoy that it was tripping over logs,” Elisa said.

The hunter won’t soon forget that first gobbler she took with a 20-gauge shotgun. Elisa didn’t set her sights on a grand slam until a few seasons later.

“I didn’t even know there was such a thing,” she said.

Then in 2011, Jim was working in Texas and seized the opportunity to take his daughter turkey hunting on a south Texas ranch for the Rio Grande species. It was spring break. Elisa was 14 with more hunting experience. She and her dad both shot gobblers on that trip.

Now the two were on a roll. Last year on spring break, Jim and Elisa flew to south Florida where the Osceola species of wild turkey roams. This turkey about drove them nuts.

Dad and daughter were with a guide on private land near Lake Okeechobee when a gobbler flew into a nearby field.

“He walked in a circle around us for an hour and a half,” Elisa said. On this hunt she carried a brand new 20-gauge and killed the gobbler when it was about 50 paces out.

This spring, her mom, Donna Daniel, got to be part of the last turkey in Elisa’s grand slam. All three Daniels made the trip to New Mexico in the quest for a Elisa’s Merriam’s turkey. Donna didn’t hunt, but was there for moral support and to see the countryside.

“It’s so remote out there that one time I went to get ice and it was a 60-mile round trip,” Donna said.

To Donna, the grand slam is all about the memories her husband and daughter have made over the years. It’s all about what Elisa has learned about conservation and wildlife management while hoping to get a gobbler in range.

“She may be the only 16-year-old who has her own trophy room,” Donna said.

Near the family’s living room, the fanned tails from three of Elisa’s grand slam birds are mounted and displayed on a wall. There’s a full-body mount of one of the gobblers. Jim mounts the tails himself. Right now he’s working on the fanned-tailmounts of the Merriam’s turkeys they shot in New Mexico.

Elisa likes to hunt deer, too, but enjoys turkey hunting because there’s more moving around than with deer hunting. She started hunting white-tails with her dad when she was 10.

The father and daughter hunting duo isn’t finished. There’s another slam in the world of turkey hunting, the royal slam. A royal slam requires killing a fifth species, the Gould’s wild turkey, found mainly in Mexico. Gould’s turkeys are making a comeback in the United States along the southern border. Jim said taking a Gould’s turkey is next on their list.

It’ll be another hunt and another memory the two will create together.

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FLIP PUTTHOFF IS OUTDOORS EDITOR FOR NWA MEDIA. FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER, TWITTER.COM/NWAFLIP.

Outdoor, Pages 7 on 05/23/2013

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