Boy what a morning. My three words to describe it are exciting, frustrating, and rewarding.
My brother had a double header last night about an hour from my house, so my dad didn"™t get home until about midnight. I laid down about 10:30, and fell asleep after my dad got home. To say I was excited for my first morning going after gobblers would be an understatement.
I woke up at 3:15, jumped out of the shower, drank a Monster, and we were in my truck at 3:30. Going on not much sleep all week, and only a couple hours last night, my dad wanted me to drive while he slept. We made record time .
The farm we hunted today is about 1000 acres. It is 700 of bottom land and a 300 acre ridge. In order to get to the top of the ridge from the bottom ground without walking up a cliff, you have to drive a little further down the county road. We decided to hunt the bottom ground first today.
Our first setup was one of the most promising of the morning, I thought we were going to kill him. We had him at about 70 yards through the woods, but a hen drew him away before coming in. We knew where he went, and snuck up on him in a field. He was about 100 yards from the fence that separates the woods from the field. We setup on the fence-line and belly-crawled to get a hen and gobbler decoy about 5 yards from the fence. We had him strutting, working his way to us slowly. He got out of strut and started to run, and we saw about a minute later a 4 wheeler coming down a farm road. We were not happy campers. After being in birds all morning, messing up multiple times, we decided to walk back in the direction of the truck to decide what to do. It was about 8:40, and we had to head home no later than 10:00. We decided to drive up to the ridge for the last hour.
We worked our way slowly about halfway down the ridge road, and decided we should start to head back to the truck. The turkeys haven"™t been gobbling at locator calls all morning so on the way back to the truck we decided to use the box call to try and strike a bird. I told my dad "śjust watch we"™ll strike one on the way back, and chase him past 10:00"ť. Boy was I wrong. We stopped, my dad started to yelp, and he got cut off by a gobble about 70 yards through the woods. Since we were using a yelp, the gobbler was on his way before we got setup. So we jumped up against trees about 10 feet apart, and watched. My dad gave 2 more yelps, and was cut off again. From the time we heard the first gobble, to the time I shot, it was about a minute and a half. It was really thick where we were setup. When I saw a head coming through the woods about 25 yards away, these were the only that things went through my mind- gobbler, wait for a tree to swing my gun, and pull the trigger. From the time I saw the gobbler to the time I shot it was about 5 seconds. I shot him at about 15-17 yards. He has a 10"ť beard, is 19 pounds 15 ounces, and I"™ll measure the spurs later today.
I"™m going to guide a couple buddies tomorrow, wish us luck.
Gobbler down!
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