Back in the seventies our muzzleloading club would always sponsor a live turkey shoot for its members. It was always held about 8:00 o'clock on the morning of Thanksgiving and it was MEMBERS ONLY. After we helped the mrs. stuff and prepare our own turkey and get it in the oven, we'd gather our guns and head to the range.
One of the club members would buy 8 or 10 toms from a local farmer and have them tied and bagged in burlap with their heads protruding from one of the corners of the bags. We'd place them, one or two at a time, behind the 60 yard, railroad tie backstop and draw names to see who shot first. All shooting was done off-hand.
The last shoot we had, five of us claimed all the birds with three of them attributed to me. Now unlike Roger's earlier post, we didn't have bird cleaners on hand to process them and the last thing I wanted to do was drag sixty-some pounds of turkeys home to clean on Thanksgiving morning. One of the fellows always butchered hogs on Thanksgiving weekend and had his scalding trough set up. He invited everyone to his farm and we fired up the scalding trough and had at it. Honest to God, we looked like a turkey processing assembly line. The USDA would have been proud of us.
We redistributed the turkeys amongst us and I believe everyone made it home before there was scum on the gravy.
Dan
