Catchy title, eh? And not far from the truth of things, either.
As you all may have seen in a previous post from yours truley, this season has been one of my most aggrivating to date. The lack of cooperation from Mother Nature along with the over abundance of other hunters in the area had really started to weigh on me, and hard.
This last saturday however, everything fell into place. The rains finally let up, the sky was clear, the sun was out, no other hunters, it was perfect.
As usual my father and I dragged ourselves out of bed early Saturday morning and headed up to the mountain. By the time we got parked it was just cracking daylight. We decided to walk down a logging road that we had scouted the previous night; we had seen a good deal of sign here the night before.
About 200 yards down the road I let loose on my crow call and stopped to listen. There! A gobble! And another, and another, and another! Only problem was they were about a half mile down the mountain! After hot-footing it 3/4 of the way down to where we heard the birds I let loose with the crow call again.
Gobble, gobble, gobble! There they were again! About 150 yards away. We set up in a flash, out in front of us on a bend in the logging road were 3 hen decoys and a jake. After a short series of yelps and clucks, we had the birds puttin' a little skip in their giddy-up if you know what I mean. They were hauling to get to us. I barley had time to raise my shotgun when 4 toms strutted into view just the other side of our spread.
We had already decided that any tom that came in on the left, my dad would take and the one on the right, I had.
Well, pictures speak louder than words:
My dad's bird. 10" beard, 3/4" spurs, 21lbs.
Another shot of the same bird.
My bird. 9 3/4" beard, 3/4" spur (he only had one), 23lbs.
Another shot of my bird.
Lester, the landowner and a good friend with both birds.
*The reason for the...nakedness.. of my bird: When I shot my bird he was in front of a very large rose bush. When he went down he flopped into this rose bush. After flopping around in here for a minute he flopped down a bank and into the flowing creek. The combination of the rose bush and the rushing water managed to knock most of his feathers away. As embarassing as it was to show this bird off, it sure did make plucking him a whole lot easier!
Also, I appaulogize for the poor qaulity of the pictures. Where we were set up was very shadowy, thick pines surrounding the area. The camera was also a bit dusty.
I also don't have a scanner and am forced to take pictures of my pictures with my digital camera.
Now to go after this season's second bird! Can't wait!
Team 7, I won't post this bird's score yet as I'm not sure if this is the one I plan on submitting.
I wish the best of luck to everyone still chasing their birds, don't give up!
As dissapointment set in...
Where about do you hunt? I grew up just south of Spokane and my sister in-law still lives in spokane. Was thinking about makin it up that way one day to hunt there.
