Last Thursday kicked off the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. I attended the convention in 2020, right as COVID was becoming a headline, it was cancelled in 2021, and I decided to wait before attending it again for one more year just to play it safe.

While I didn’t travel to Nashville, I have been getting a steady stream of emails with announcements of sponsor companies, online auctions, and news of who won what awards.

Combine those with seeing pictures and videos on social media of the Sport Show, where all the major hunting companies have booths setup with the newest gear, and the thought of turkey season being in the near future started to creep into my head.

Getting notifications about newly released clothing from Ol’ Tom Technical Turkey Gear, a company I am a Field Ambassador for, in a new favorite camo pattern helped the ember started to expand.

What helped push it over the limit was a phone call from Environmental Conservation Officer Brett Armstrong about the Chenango County Youth Turkey Hunt for this spring.

Brett has been in charge of this for many years, while I have been a part of it for only the two years before COVID forced us to cancel in 2020 and 2021. The Youth Hunt is a mentored hunt where a youth hunter is paired with two adult hunters who serve as the mentors for the hunt.

To participate, the youth hunter has to have taken and passed Hunter Education and bought their hunting license and turkey tags. Hunters and mentors meet at the Oxford Gun Club for a safety day on a Saturday before the hunt weekend to meet each other and go over turkey hunting information and strategies. The youth hunters also handle and fire a shotgun on the shooting range to make sure they understand safe firearms handling and how to aim when turkey hunting. On the weekend of the hunt, the mentors and the youth hunter will meet in the morning and hunt.

When they are done hunting, everyone meets at the Oxford Gun Club where lunch is provided and pictures are taken of successful hunters and of the entire group. The Youth Turkey Hunt is funded from a few different organizations plus donations. As a local NWTF chapter president, I get money through the NWTF New York Superfund to put towards the weekend. The Superfund is completely funded by fundraising dollars that are generated within New York State at NWTF events and can only be spent on certain things, such as habitat improvement or outreach events (i.e. youth hunts).

To add even more of a fan to the ember going in my head, on Monday my wife called out from the living room to come look at the turkeys in the backyard. I stopped what I was doing and walked over to the window to look.

As I did, our dog also spotted the turkeys and started barking. The birds walked briskly around the end of the house, so I bolted to the bedroom to keep watching. As they rounded the garden I was able to snap a few quick pictures with my phone of the three jakes and one tom before they walked across the road.

If you are interested, or know someone who would be interested in participating as a youth hunter or as a mentor, please follow the Genegantslet Gobblers NWTF page on Facebook. This is my local chapter and I will be posting the contact information on there once it is finalized in the near future.