Friday Morning,

Started out in the morning in the middle of a field between a number of birds that travel through this spot. The morning light came up and gobbling started but the birds did not come in. I had a friend down on a field edge that was setup and the birds move around him aswell. So one gobbler headed out in the open field and gobbled at my calls but walked off. I picked up and moved down to Chris's setup and we move over to a field and setup closer in the same direction . I placed a hen decoy out and we sat and I called once the bird returned anwser to the call.

I gave it a minute and made another call, short series of yelps and he returned again but a little closer. So I started to cluck only on the call. He came closer and closer , then out in the middle of the field he stood in Fan looking at the decoy. Now I've seen so many times this season the bird work good all the way to the decoys untill they get out side of shooting range and then walk off. So I though I would only give a couple very soft cluck as soon as the bird goes into strut and this is what I did. The bird would come out of strut and walk a few yards and go back into strut. I would cluck again a few times. He worked right into the decoy. As he walked in strut around the decoy I had some brush in front of me and at the time of setting up the decoy I never noticed that it was in line with the decoy untill I sat down. So needless to say I had a small problem , I could not see the bird at the decoy. So I waited him out and let him walk around untill I could see the head of the bird. Well heres the next problem I aimed at the bird and in the excitement squeezed the trigger , but forgot about the Darn travel on the benelli trigger system. When I shot I guess I was just off the neck a little and the bang went off and the bird did what ever because I could not see him real good , but I could see that he was trying to run. I cranked in another follow up shot and waited for him to move into another opening and as he passed I shot again. I hit him in the Body and he flew

He headed right over the ridge top into a 100,000 foot dropped gorge and was gone. I new he was hit hard so Chris and I ran for the ridge and we moved apart and headed dowen the steep imbankment. About 75-100 yards down I found him upside down in a pile with no movement. Now we were right on him and it took no time to make it to him because of the straight down run it was, so I figure he died in the air and piled up. After cleaning him , he was broke up and brused real bad as the fall took the most of the impact. but there was a few shot that hit the neck/head of the bird.

When we got back to the setup area , we looked over as to what may have happened. I could see I hit him the first shot , because of feathers around the decoy and another thing I found was the wad about 2 feet passed the decoy (this is a dirt field), so this tells me that the shot did not have time to open at 25 yards and I hit the bird with flyers from the load. Something I never thought of with building this gun. Being a new gun It may take me some time to get used of the way this thing shoots. Guess this can happen to the best of us. Over all it has been a very tough season and all the birds have been presured so bad from others that they do not want to work that great to calls. This was the ending of the Friday moning hunt,,,

18.80 IB
9.5 beard
3/4 spurs