Good morning team.

We're on the board again. I took a 66 pointer on Saturday morning. Me and my friend called in a group of 4 longbeards off the roost, and took a double. From the looks of things, I took the dominant bird - a 3 year old, the other three looked like clone two-year-olds.

What a hunt! I'd guess the farm that we hunt has about 10-12 bearded birds living there, and usually they're roosted everywhere, but not Saturday. They were all together. The bad part was that we were on the opposite ridge when they started talking, and it was already daylight before they let out the first gobble. Once they all got started, it was impressive. I didn't have time to soak it in, because we were on the move.

We set up about 200 yards below them in a wooded, grassy bottom that's wide open (couldn't get any closer). I put out the Pretty Boy & Pretty Girl set, and we found a nice place where we could see. After a couple soft clucks, and a few wing flaps, we started purring and clucking on the ground. The gobblers shut off like a switch. Silence.

After about 5 minutes of that, my buddy let out a good yelp with a little cut at the end, and 4 toms hammered back - they were already halfway to us... We never made another call. They were within sight a minute later, and once they saw the pretty boy, it was all over. They came right in and surrounded it, and the bird I killed was going nose-to-nose with the decoy when my buddy says "1... 2.... BOOM" (one, two, shoot. That's the routine) We had two on the ground, and my pretty boy took the worst of it. His whole tailfan was chewedup with half of my buddy's pattern. LOL

Man, I finally broke the bank and bought the expensive decoy. We hunted with the stupid thing for 10 minutes before it gets all shot to smithereens. Hmmmph. It's not that bad really, I wanted a real fan for it anyway.

So, I'm in first place in the local turkey contest with 66 1/8 points... for now anyway... I'm sure I'll be knocked out of contention by the end of week 2.

He had 1.125 and 1.25" spurs, 10" beard and weighed 22 pounds, 6 oz. Pretty nice bird, but definitely not the resident boss. I saw them all together, and there's a tom that always travels solo, and he's a real whopper. This guy has been running with that pack of 2-year-olds for most of this spring. I knew we'd cross paths sooner or later.

The bird that I killed, when he was about 40 yards out, he jumped up onto a stump and stood there like a hawk, scowling down at those decoys for a couple seconds. Then, he leaped off the stump, hit the ground and blew up - strutting straight over to that plastic decoy, and going nose-to-nose with it. The other 3 followed right behind him.

Awesome hunt.

The rest of you guys keep plugging away, there are a lot of birds out there, and it's only a matter of time before a situation presents itself.