Megan Shuler

College student tags first Gobbler

Megan Shuler is the latest inductee into the spring madness known as turkey hunting. On her first ever turkey hunt, she allowed her boyfriend to coax a longbeard into shotgun range, and the rest as they say is history. Amazingly, they went back to the woods the very next morning and she made it a two-fer on turkey harvests.

Shuler is a blonde-haired veteran of the beauty pageant system and was the 2012 Teen Miss South Carolina. Her philanthropic work during that year benefited the Palmetto Children’s Hospital, raising awareness for those in need of medial care. Today she is a student and a Teacher’s Assistant for Shotgun and Riflery at Clemson University and she shoots a Benelli 12-gauge shotgun.

The setting for her fateful first turkey hunt in Darlington County, S.C. included hardwoods where the turkeys preferred to roost and a nearby field edge where she and Josh Stuckey set up to hunt. The tom gobbled from the roost at dawn, but not convincingly. Then at 6:45 the howl of a lone coyote seemed to stir up the gobbler and he began to vocalize a good bit louder.

By 7 a.m. they could hear that the bird was down to the ground, and some hen calls were mixed in too. Stuckey began his calling routine and the hens started coming towards Shuler’s position, with that tom turkey following along in strut. “I pulled the trigger when that gobbler was at 45-paces,” said Shuler. “At first I was completely in shock and my heart was racing. To say the least, I am now addicted to turkey hunting.”

After taking the time to make some photos, the tale of the tape showed that the boss tom weighed 21-pounds, sported a 10-inch beard and 1.5-inch spurs. Plenty of veteran hunters would fall apart at the sight of such a majestic tom within gun range, but Shuler credits her familiarity with the gun range as helping her to seal the deal. Or perhaps the glare of the pageant lights helped this young lady to shine when that full strut tom turkey took center stage.

Jeff Dennis is a longtime outdoorsman. Read his blog at www.LowcountryOutdoors.com