As my friend Jeff Rice and I drove the serpentine road leading into the heart of the famous Y O Ranch Headquarters in the Texas Hill Country on a crisp spring day last week, my mind backtracked a quarter century to when I was invited to hunt this beautiful ranch. Here I was again, a much older hunter now feeling the same awe that I felt many years earlier.

A group of blackbuck antelope darted across the road and back in the brush we spotted all sorts of exotic animals, fallow and axis deer as well as native Hill Country whitetail was in abundance. The two flocks of turkeys really whetted our hunting blood as we slowly drove along in route to the headquarters.

We were here for a spring turkey hunt and I mentioned to Jeff that there is no better place in the world for a turkey hunt than in the Texas Hill Country when the fields were aglow with bluebonnets and Indian paint brushes and, no better ranch than the YO.

The history of the YO Ranch is a fascinating one which began back in 1880 when Charles Schreiner, a Texas Ranger, purchased the land. There is far too much historical information pertaining to the ranch for me to cover in my weekly outdoor column but volumes have been written, some of which are available with a simple Google search.

Suffice it to say that Jeff and I were hunting on legendary ground where many famous people from all over the world have traveled to hunt. The ranch is where hunting leases first began back in 1943 when a portion of the ranch was leased to a large company for hunting. A precedent was set and a new revenue source for landowners in Texas established. The ‘hunting lease’ was born!

As we pulled up to the YO Ranch Headquarter buildings, I was taken aback many years to when I first invited to visit the ranch as guest of Louie Schreiner. The remodeled log structures including the main lodge, the old schoolhouse and stagecoach stop. The old buildings have right there, marking the passage of time for many years.

There are also many improvements and additions to the ranch that through expert planning manage to retain the historic feel of bygone days as well an incorporating modern conveniences. The new owners are doing a marvelous job of keeping tradition alive.

We were greeted by ranch manager Zach Sanger, to whom I took an instant ‘liking’. I’m sure the responsibilities of managing such a large operation with varied duties is quite challenging but Zach with his good nature, knowledge of the ranch and people skills makes it look easy. We arrived around midday and had plenty of time for a tour of the place including a chance to look over some of the old YO Ranch memorabilia.

In one room that contained old ledgers, books, magazines, letters, pistols, photos, etc. some almost 150 years old, I could literally ‘smell’ the history.

But we were here also to hunt turkeys and the afternoon sun was leaning heavily toward the west, it was time to get after spring gobblers!

I’m accustomed to hunting turkey on smaller tracts of land where the birds are often pressured, especially after the first few days of the season; not the case on the YO. Zach loaded us into the ‘hunting buggy’ and we drove at least three miles to an area where we dropped Jeff off on a field edge surrounded by cedars. The ground was covered with turkey sign; droppings, dusting spots and an occasional turkey feather were obvious to anyone that reads turkey sign. We were in the epicenter of ‘Turkeydome”!

I was dropped off at another spot a good mile down the ranch road that looked equally promising. Backed into some thick cedar cover, I scraped a few plaintive hen yelps on my old box call with no response. I remember a saying the late Bob Hood, one of my turkey hunting mentors, used to say: “Patience kills more turkey than anything, Luke.”

I just set back and relaxed for fifteen minutes then hit the box call again, this time much louder. Over the hill several hundred yards away I was answered by what sounded like two different gobblers. The dance was on and my I could feel the adrenaline pumping. There is just something about hearing a big old spring gobbler sounding off in response to your calling.

This was textbook turkey hunting. I would call, the gobblers stop and answer, each time I called they were closer. In a very short time, I got a glimpse of three gobblers on the edge of the field about 100 yards out. With a few coaxing, plaintive yelps from my call, one broke away and came toward my decoy at a trot.

I usually hunt turkey with a shotgun, bow or crossbow but this time I was using my Seneca 50 caliber Dragon Claw big bore air rifle. I love eating wild turkey as much as hunting them and guessed the big bullet traveling at a low velocity would not damage a lot of meat, especially if I was picky with my shot.

From this point, things happened quickly. The bird trotted in within 25 yards and when he turned broadside, the power of compressed air proved sufficient to anchor my turkey dinner on the spot! This all occurred within 40 minutes of the time Zach had dropped me off.

Later that afternoon, just before dark, we drove over to Jeff’s area. He was proudly holding up a big tom turkey he had shot earlier in the afternoon. Another old friend of mine used to say, “Anything can and often does occur on a turkey hunt.”

He was close to being right! I was attempting to video my hunt and later discovered the SD card was faulty and didn’t record any video. Jeff says he leveled his Mossberg shotgun on the gobbler, pulled the trigger and ‘click’! It didn’t fire. He had forgotten to jack a shell into the chamber! As quietly as he could, he loaded the Mossberg and cleanly downed his gobbler.