Lone Star Turkey & Pork: My First Rio with a Bow

I’ve been thinking back on a Texas hunt from a couple years ago, mostly because it still feels like one of those trips that explains why we do this in the first place.

A buddy invited me out to his property, a place where we had spent the better part of the last decade chasing hogs and filling freezers. Some properties hold game. Some hold history too. You remember where hogs crossed, where the wind swirled, where a setup looked right on paper and never came together, and where things suddenly worked faster than they had any right to.

Over the years we had run into plenty of turkeys there, but this was the first season we were actually going to be on the property for the opener. That changed the feel of the whole trip. We weren’t just on a hog place that happened to have birds. We were there with a real chance to start the morning with a Rio and still spend the evening doing what we had always done there—chase pork.

That combination made this one memorable before daylight ever hit the field.

A Familiar Place, but a Different Kind of Morning

Part of what made this hunt matter was the history behind it. This wasn’t a place I had seen once and pinned on a map. It was ground with a track record. We had already built a lot of camp life and freezer meat around it. The turkey hunt felt like a new chapter on property that already meant something.

That changes how a morning feels. When you know the ground, you stop forcing mystery into the story and start paying more attention to setup quality, movement, and timing. That’s what this hunt came down to.

The Setup

I tucked in next to a piece of deadfall about 50 yards inside a finger of mesquite bordering a large wheat field. It was the kind of setup I’ve come to prefer for turkey bowhunting: not fully exposed, not buried so deep that the shot gets crowded, but in a place where birds have to close the distance and look for the source of the calling instead of standing in the open and evaluating the whole situation from long range.

I had my decoys set about 20 yards in front of me:

• Avian-X Breeder Hen
• Avian-X Jake

I’ve always liked getting into timber edges, smaller openings, and spots with a little shape instead of sitting on a giant open field edge and hoping a bird walks right to a stake. The more exposed the setup is, the more room a tom has to inspect it, stall out, or decide something is off. If I can make him hunt for the hen a little bit, I usually will.

In my hand was my old faithful glass slate call.

Some pieces of gear earn a permanent place because they’re flashy. Some earn it because when you need something dependable, that’s what you grab. This one falls in the second category.

Bow and Gear for the Hunt

For this hunt, I was shooting a Xpedition Xlite 29 with a QAD Drop Away Rest, Tight Spot quiver, and a Spot Hogg Fast Eddie sight. My arrow setup was Victory VAP TKO Elite 300 spine arrows tipped with a G5 Mega Meat.

This isn’t meant to turn into a gear review, but if the equipment was part of the actual setup, it belongs in the story.

When the Birds Answered

I started working the glass slate and got interrupted almost immediately by three different gobblers. That’s the kind of interruption I can live with.

Hearing multiple birds answer from different directions has a way of speeding your pulse up while also settling your confidence. At least now you know the field isn’t dead.

They were closing fast, but not in a perfectly cooperative straight line like they do in your imagination. Real bird movement usually has a little more angle and uncertainty to it than that. Not long after, I caught sight of two toms cutting the corner of the field and working toward the decoys.

At about 70 yards both birds locked on and went into full strut.

That distance can feel like forever when you’re bowhunting turkeys, especially when you know they’ve seen enough to either commit or hang up. Once they keyed on the setup, though, the hunt started moving in the right direction. They closed the distance, came right between the decoys, and started working over the Jake.

That’s where turkey bowhunting gets tense in a hurry. With multiple sets of eyes in front of you, there is no free movement. You don’t draw when it’s convenient. You draw when the birds are occupied enough that your movement won’t light the whole setup on fire.

There was no chance I could draw early, so I stayed still and let them work.

The Shot on My First Rio With a Bow

Once the birds were fully engaged with the decoys, I came to full draw and sent the arrow.

The Victory VAP TKO Elite 300 spine and G5 Mega Meat connected, and the bird expired about 30 yards away.

It was my first Rio with a bow.

That alone would have been enough to make the morning memorable, but what sticks with me most is how unpolished the whole trip was in the best possible way. It wasn’t built around content. It wasn’t some overly packaged hunt where every beat felt prewritten. It was just a real morning on familiar Texas ground, with a buddy, on the opener, and a setup that came together when it needed to.

That’s a lot of the appeal for me. The hunt mattered because it fit into a longer story. We had years of hog hunting on that property already. We had seen turkeys there before. We knew the place. Then finally the calendar lined up, the opener matched the trip, and the morning produced a first that had probably been sitting out there waiting on the right opportunity.

From a Turkey Morning Back to Pork That Night

We snapped a few quick photos, handled the usual post-harvest work, and headed back to the truck so we could get ready for that night’s hog hunt.

That transition is part of what still makes me smile about the trip. One minute it’s a spring turkey morning with strutters in the decoys. A little later it’s back to thinking about hogs, coolers, and the rest of camp life. It felt like Texas in the right way—practical, busy, and not overly polished.

Firsts always carry some weight, and this was my first Rio with a bow. But even beyond that, this hunt stands out because it felt honest. Good property. Good friend. Familiar ground. A setup I believed in. Birds that did what turkeys sometimes do when things line up.

That’s enough to make one stick.

Gear We Used

Pro Tip

On spring turkey hunts, mosquitoes can make a calm sit feel a lot longer than it needs to. A Thermacell is still a smart thing to keep in your vest so you can stay focused on the birds instead of swatting bugs.