It was opening day for my week of turkey hunting, the first day of decent weather for quite a few weeks. Dad said to be at his house no later than 3:45am. We got to our spot when it was still dark and could see the silhouettes of the turkeys roosting in the trees. It felt like magic there in that little patch of woods just off the shore of Lake Michigan. Dad uttered a few obscenities under his breath. “This place looks different in the pitch black…now where did I put that blind?” We stood still. With day break coming closer every minute and the turkeys in the trees directly in front of us we had to be careful. We got our bearings and saw the outline of the blind. Now…how to get in without them noticing us. They were literally right on top of us, one wrong move and it’d be over. Could we actually pull this off? All I could think of is…thank God I listened to Dad…if we’d been any later the rising sun would have blown our cover. Now how would we get in? Dad’s advice…crouch or crawl, they might think you’re a deer. Dad put up the decoys and I crawled my way to the blind. We were in. Within minutes the turkeys started talking to each other and we started calling back. Gobbles from three directions. I was anxious to get positioned correctly, “Just relax,” Dad said. “Enjoy the experience, listen to them talking and learn from it. It’ll be a bit before they get down.” We called back and forth with them for a while. An hour or so later we were surrounded by 10-12 turkeys, all males with the hens trailing behind somewhere in the distance. Two toms and two jakes started approaching us from the right but they were cautious. We waited, careful not to move even the slightest bit. Dad made an aggressive call and that was all the largest tom needed. He was headed for the decoy. Then seemingly out of nowhere another ginormous tom started coming in hot from the left. I heard Dad say, “Line it up! Line it up!” He didn’t see the one on the left. I sized up the birds, they were both big boys. Not wanting to mess up the shot that was so perfectly aligned on the right, I moved my sight. The hardest decision that day was deciding which bird. Beautiful memories, beautiful land…an adventure that will forever be etched in my heart. “Crouch like a deer!” I’ll never forget that. I love you Dad.