well everyone i'm home now an i think it's time for me to shed the light on this tale,, first off i want to once again say to both youngbuck and nc hunter thanks guy's even though i didnt get to bring home the biggest bird in nc
i dang sure had the best turkey hunt of my life, rock dont sell yourself short bud you did a bang up job of callin that tom in not once not 2 times but 3 times, and forrest thank you bro for the invite and the welcome home you gave me,and yes there will be another day to chase the turks in nc,, but now for the tale[8D] NC hunter and I had been hunting all morning the first few places we tried just never worked out one of which is another funny story. but anyway we ended up in a strip of woods with a nice creek bed running around it, NC was hunting with his bow and I with a 12ga b/p well NC gave a few calls and we instantly got a response from about 150yrds away. so we quickly setup on the ridge of the creekbed well old boss tom came on up about 5 minutes later but he had only responded to a few calls ,he was about 30yrds out from us when he walked behind some trees and just vanished. well he ended up in a plowed field when we spotted him again, but when NC started calling him he did something i have never seen he actually circled us and came back up the ridge, well when i finally got a good view of this bird i was shocked to say the least, he came in at full strut, and his beard was about 4 to 6 inches off the ground, his fan was about the same way 4 to 6 inches off the ground i would most definatly a trophy bird, well to make a very long story short the bird came to 19 paces from us i had the bead on him for at least 4 minutes when he was just about to step into an open clearing he turned and went back , and stopped in front of a branch that was laying between to trees at about 18" off the ground, well all i could see was the top of his head i thought to myself comeon big guy walk over to the decoy's but no instead he lifted his head and i had a clear shot of his head and of about 4"s of his neck, i took the shot and under the cloud of smoke i saw him roll right over, but then he flipped back over on his feet and while staggering he took flight but never got over 8 feet in the air and he only went about 10yrds an dropped back down. well NC ran after him as well as me but he hit the ground and had to use his wings to try and steady himself but at that point it was NC who watched him stumbling as he ran towards the woods , now i figured i had a good hit on him as there where no feathers where i shot him and we could see a fairly decent shot pattern where he had been when i fired, we searched for him but never found a trace, and yes my heart sank when we didnt find him, but later that day both youngbuck and pat ely went back with us and we searched again he was gone
hopefully NC will get his shot at this bird,LOL NOTTTTTTT i will get him next season[:@][:@] and now as far as that pic YOUNGBUCK forgot to say that i had just driven 16hours from mich straight through to NC and had only had about 2 hours sleep yeah i was pretty wore out by the time the pic was taken but i still hung in there an hunted the rest of the day,, so here's my proposition to youngcluck bro when you get the notion come on up to mich this year and bring nc with ya say around nov 15th for rifle season lol and dont forget to bring your longjohn's lets see how well you fair off against one of our cagey old mich bucks
oh and 1 last thing pat again congrats on your bird and i guess you can tell the people here how yb wouldnt SHOOT when he had a shot
and the few other things we learned ROFLMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO all kidding aside was a great pleasure to hunt with the 3 of you and hopefully we will do it again,, and now after driving another 17 hours and then writteing this post i'm off for as yb would say a nap thanks again guys was a blast
Deadshots pic
