Went out this am with a good friend of mine. My first time out this year, his second.
Location was Cazenovia, NY.
Setup in the wrong location, no birds within 100 yards that we could hear, so around 545 or so we moved locations to see what we could do, this being a 100Yd Move north towards a field. Got to the field, glassing the hills,and a woodpecker sounds off in the woods below us...low and behold a tom sounded off right after him. So after a solid 1/2 hour of cat an mouse with these birds (at the time we heard 3 different gobblers and a few hens with them)...we were setup within 75 yards of them in ppretty thick hardwoods.
Our only problem is that they would only answer to a peacock locater call. That's IT. we had 3 different mouth calls, and 7-8 different slate style combinations, meanwhile they were moving around us in a circle from north to south. Well finally I hit the right note, being a Boss Tom Glass call and an acrylic striker...I just said forget it and started getting really aggressive cutting and yelping like there was no tomorrow...well they liked that, and soon enough (after my buddy repositioned 2 times) I saw the red heads literately running to us. Turned out to be atleast 1 jake, and 3 maybe 4 gobblers, there were 5 birds sounding off total. as soon as i saw them, i made one last yelp and purr, they sounded off and i shut up.
The lead gobbler ran towards us, within 40 yards and stopped. we had the stare down with him, he knew something wasnt quite right, and at the time my buddy needed 1-2 more steps for a clean shot. after a minute or so, he got the steps and his Benelli Pump shooting 3.5" hevi shot took care of that bird at around 34 steps in heavy timber. The other 4 took off and I immediately started calling frantically, got one more gobble out of them and they were off to the races, the other way.
This long beard had what looked to be and unusually Thick beard on him when i was checking out his hardware when they were coming in, and there was another bird with an equally thick if not thicker beard in the pack...well that "thick" beard turned into 2 equally sized 8.5" beards and an additonal 3.75" beard to boot. Left spur came in at 7/8" and the right was an even 1". only drawback is he wieghed in at 16lbs, which is very light for the area, i took a bird last year at 20lbs, and the year before at 20 and 23lbs. Might've been the hard winter!
It was a phenomenal hunt and I enjoyed being the guide, but the best part was we got it all on film
I only have a picture taken from a cell phone so i will post that up asap....
Here's to tomorrow and the rest of may! [8D]
Put one to bed in NY!
