Well Mottz, the pressure is on us. We are currently in 3rd 34.3705 behind the 12 gauge team. That forces us to both have to put down a decent upgrade, unless you can hang up a 60 or better. Of course that hinges on the the 1st and 2nd team not upgrading any more. With this late in the season, that is a possibility. :) No pressure. There's always a multibeard floating around out there.

Good luck guys. I would say that the season is in yalls hands but I think we did pretty dang good myself. Especially considering the weather.

After today, don't get your hopes too high. Didn't hear or see anything until I went to check cameras. Came over a hill and 4 of them were on the other property line and they took off running. I just wonder if it isn't getting other pressure when I'm not in there?????

Later in the season they start gathering back up in bachelor groups, and usually aren't very vocal after flydown. This happened to me last year, and if I had staid where I was, I would have gotten my bird, but moved and got busted by a large group of males.

Hey boys, sorry for bein quiet the last few days, got a really sick 5 yr old here.
Mottz, sounds like yer best bet is to just get where you know they move thru, keep quiet and camp out and hope for the best. You seen em there so you know they are still around, good luck to ya!
Jay, there's a 12 in. beard with 1 1/2 hooks in Kansas just waitin for ya! Go get him!!!!!

Have are last 2 hunters started gearing up for this weekend yet??????

In a way yes and in a way no. Weather has been total crap around here. Wont quit raining. Who knows what the weekend will do. But I already have a plan to take the gun, mouth call and maybe the fan and just sit close to the roost and hopefully they naturally come my way. If not then I don't know.

Weather forecast in Kansas is thunderstorms all 3 days off and on. Sunday morning setting up the blind where I shot my big one last year, and staying there all day. Bringing my kindle, comfortable chair, and kickenback. Usually something wanders by during late morning to late afternoon, and hopen for a shot on a Tom. Have 2 tags, so Jake comes in, he's toast. Need the fan, and meat. I've passed probably 15 Jakes this year, but not the next one.

Good luck guys! Hope things work out for the both of ya!!

I'll be heading out Sun morning. Give it 1 last try. Wasn't too excited but a co-worker went home last night and shot a 7 1/2 bearded hen. Now I need something to come back with. Been a good run though here guys. Been alot of fun and be ready for next year. Maybe the contest mods will take into consideration the team chat and keep us together for winning that? But lets see what happens tomorrow first.

I'm headen out now, and setten up my blind tonight, so I'm ready to go for Sunday morning. 3 days give me a reasonable chance for some action.

Good Luck Iowa!

I'm hanging it up guys. Went out this morning and just at daybreak the wind picked up and the drizzle really picked up. Didn't hear anything so I decided that my season has been long enough. Sorry I didn't get another down but it has been a head shaker of a season. These birds just do not want to be out in the open. I'm at a loss???? Been fun guys!!

Thanks for all the effort Mottz! You gave em hell and thats all anyone could ask for. Congrats again on a successful season!

Got a call from Iowa Jaybird last night, He did it again!!! 19 lbs, 1 in spurs 9 3/4 beard.
Your score is 19 + 10 + 10 + 19.5 = 58.5
Congrats to Jay!!!

Jaybird is on fire in Kansas!!!!!!!!! Just called me and he has #5! A biggun this time, double beard! He's gonna call me back with the stats in a bit.
Congrats Jay!!!

Thats great to hear. I need someone to cover my butt:s2:

Here's the stats on Jays 5th bird
17 lbs 6 oz
1 1/16 spurs
10 1/2 beard-1
8 3/4 beard-2

Your score is 17.375 + 10.625 + 10.625 + 38.5 = 77.125
What a way to end your season Jay!!! Awsome job!!!!

Awesome score Iowa!! I wanna see that guy!

Wow!! That is awesome. Got to see some pics. That is one heck of a way to end a season.

I just rolled in from Kansas. I'll get everything posted tonight, and let you know how it all went down. Sunday at 3:57, and Today at 11:30 filled my last 2 tags. Good year with filling 5/6 tags, 4 of which was on Public. Now it's time for a shower.

Bird 1.


I have all the photos of measurements if needed.
Bird 2

The only pic I don't like is of the one spur. It measured longer than 1/16 because it slid up. We fought 30 mph winds to do these, so it was a bear. 1 person couldn't have done it alone. Now I saved everything in the fringe like the legs with spurs, and the whole area the beards were connected to if additional measurements are needed. I noticed in the 8 3/4 beard pic, we didn't take the largest strand. We measured the shorter of the two, but don't think it would matter much in the scoring.

On bird 1 I learned they were done breeding. In fact if you called they moved faster away. Dead tired and starving, they wanted nothing to do with Hens. I put sticks in the ground marking roughly 40 yards from my blind, so I have a rough idea on where to aim. As they are closer I use a finer beed. I knew this guy was out there being he was well past my 40 yard marker, and I estimated it at a 55 yard shot. My 1187 shoots 3 1/2 Hevis very well at 50, and my longest shot was 54 yards, so I aimed high and blasted, but he didn't drop. Hit, he went into panick mode running wide circles closing to 40 yards from me when he then took off flying. Then it was Pheasant hunting time, on him, follow, slight lead, and pull the trigger. Head/neck shot, bird dead when he hit the ground. Wondering why he didn't drop on first shot, paced off 65 yards not 55 on the shot. Didn't see the depression between him and my stick marker, making him look closer than he was.

Bird 2 was a learning experience from day 1. I shot bird 1 at 3:57 after coming back from lunch. On the way to lunch at 1:30 hiking up from where I had set my blind, a good early season location, I busted a large Gobbler coming out of a tall wheat field. With gun on shoulder sling, I never had a chance for a shot. I had actually thought about moving my blind for the next day up to where the fields were, but decided I would leave it where it was for today. At 11:15 no action at all made me decide to take a slow stalk up the hill close to the cover moving very slowly, and really checking out ahead closely. When I got to the top by a large bunch of bulldozed trees, I slowly peeked around, and saw 2 redheads moving my way. Couldn't tell if they were Jakes or Toms because of tall grass, and I didn't want to get busted sticking my head out. Went into a kneeling shooting position, and waited. First bird popped into my sights, saw a beard, and at 20 yards knocked him head over heels. Never saw the 2nd beard till I turned him over. The second bird was also a very nice Tom, that would have been an easy 35 yard kill, because he just stood there looking at the bird I dropped way too long if I hadn't been tagged out.
These birds are normally on Private when they are breeding, but now they are in the fields on Public. I know because of all the Hens they had to breed, they've missed way too many meals. Both my Toms were way under their normal weight, and had no waddles. Totally flat. After cleaning my bird today I discovered why all those birds were up in those fields. The craw on my bird was absolutely jammed with those big Ciattas or whatever they are called. Big ugly bugs, but they sure like eating them. I'm defintely going to remember that for future hunting in late season.

I see I forgot the weight.

Atta boy IAJay. Nice birds, the double beard is a dandy. Well, you got your 60 point bird. Congrats. I'm not sure what this does to the standings, but had to secure second place for us. Congrats again.

Very Impressive Iowa!! Congrats on a Great season.:happy0001: Curious to see the score tally also.

Thanks guys for the nice comments. My goal this year was to fill 4/6 tags, and figured if I did, I should get at least one high scorer. Accomplished all of that with 5/6 tags filled, and a 77 doublebeard. This is my best year ever, and I'm very pleased. I really pushed the envelope physically again this year, and it's definitely a challenge at my age. I'm at 182 pounds, and weighed 213 in Dec, so I'm going to try and keep it at that. Good weight for me to hunt at.

Forgot to say that I really like that pic of you and the bird on the bench!

Thanks for the pics Jay, thats is an awsome bird!!!!

Well i did some figurin and it looks like our best bird per hunter score is 382.875
Total bird count is 672.375

If i figured right, that puts us 14 pts and some change shy of second place. Would have been really cool to win it but a top 3 finish is pretty darn good i think!!

Had an issue in my other contest on no beard measurements from base to tip, and being I saved everything in the frig there wasn't a problem. Here's the photo in case there's a question about it.

Well, if i'm not mistaken, team 10 has done all the damage in this contest that it is going to do. To be honest when this thing started i didn't have very high hopes for us but we turned out to be one of the top contenders. The contest doesn't end till June 15 and we prob won't get final tally's till then, but pretty sure we have 3rd place locked up for best bird per hunter.

We had 7 out of 10 members put down a bird and a total of 12 shot. Those are some pretty impressive numbers in my opinion!

I just want to thank all you guys once again for all your hard work and participation in this thing this season! This is my 3rd yr in the contest and has by far been the most enjoyable yr i've had with it. I feel like i've made some really good friends on here this season and hope to keep in touch with you guys throughout the rest of the yr on here.

Not to take anything away from any one else, but i especially want to thank Mottz, Kellyguinn, and Iowajaybird for all the posts and keeping us up to date on all your success and failures, I enjoyed reading about the hunts that didn't quite work out just as much as the ones that did. Jay, thanks for all the phone calls and givin me your kill reports often times while he was still floppin on the ground! That was very cool, and i really enjoyed talkin to ya!

Sorry if this post is gettin a little long but also thought we should all take a minute and give one last post about how next season is lookin for everybody. I'm already gettin fired up about next spring cause a couple of the farms i hunt are getting corn planted in them this yr which is gonna help me out bigtime i think!! Plus the spot i shot mine this yr is just lousy with jakes and should be really good next season! But thats a ways off and i've got a lot of fishing and then deer season to look forward too. All that corn is gonna be great for that too! Alright guys, good luck with whatever ya got goin on for the rest of the yr and hope to stay in touch with ya all. Thanks again!

On my team in another contest putting that doublebeard down jumped us from 5th to 3rd also. Man, you talk about a last second contest changer. When I saw how long both beards were I was like one excited puppy. I figured at least in the 80's somewhere with any kind of weight at all, which I didn't get. This bird was emancipated from all the breeding and no eating. I'll bet you it was a mid 20 bird early in the season. I would like to know what kind of weight a dominant bird loses in a heavily populated area with Hens.

Great post j!! I have to agree on this being a really fun year for this contest. My goal was to try and keep the team chat going. Recent contests have gone days without any posts and that can make a guy lose interest pretty quick. And just looking at the numbers we are over 100 posts ahead of the 2nd closest. Thats what I wanted to see!

As far as turkey season goes for next year, its in the back burner of my mind. Some reason I just cannot figure them out and I hope I'll just hop in next year and everything will fall into place.

Main priority now is to get my 3 year old out for a little fishing. He's never done it but he has alot of interest in it. And the Easter Bunny brought him a spiderman fishing rod that he keeps eyeing. So I better get him out before he breaks it:s2:

2nd priority is to switch mindset, and get deer fever going. Have 6 cameras out now and have been getting alot of pics. I have a few posted in trail cam section under Mottz photos if you're interested in seeing what I have. I'm just going to keep updating that thread as the year goes on.

Lets all keep in touch (and contest mods, if you read this we won the chat, so you should keep us as a team next year also:s2:) and remember that they don't lock these threads so we can still post on here if anything interesting happens. I'll keep checking this thread. Thanks everyone for a great year!!!!

Cool Mottz! My boys are 4 and 5 and the 4 yr old has the same pole i think only it has Lightening Mcqueen on it! :p Both boys are constantly in the backyard with the casting sinkers trying their best to get them as tangled in the trees as they can! They both are always pretending they are fishing and have a ton of interest in it which is awsome! Only prob is i have a brand new boat and an 8,800 acre lake across the street and beleive it or not i don't think there's a single bluegill in it.Walleye, pike bass and some perch but they are hard to get into, gonna have to start travelin to find some gills, but got the call from my boss yesterday and goin back to work monday so the fishin is gonna slow right down now.

Also got the 5 yr old a little compound for his birthday a few weeks ago which he really enjoys shooting and is making some real progress with.
And i have a little 30 dollar crossman pellet gun which i cut the stock down on and he shoots, that kid is amazing with the thing! He can almost shoot as good as me with it. Michigan is talking about passing some type of apprentice hunting law which will allow a kid of any age to hunt as long as they are with an adult,(have to be 12 to hunt now), and if that goes thru i'm gonna have to find a little 22 that fits him cause the kid is gonna be deadly on some squirrels this fall.

Really looking forward to deer season this yr, they are putting the corn in places i hunt that have never had any crops at all in them since i've hunted them so it's gonna be like a whole new world out there this fall!
Later in the summer i too will have the trail cams out and be hangin around the trail cam forum, plus i assume you'll be on the deer hunting forums so i'll see ya there! Also i hang out on the fishing forum quite a bit so ya might want to check that one out now and then if ya don't already. Good luck with the fishin Mottz!

Sorry I havn't been on in a while. I was out on the wifes and I 1st anniversary. I actually conned her into going out to Lake Texoma for a guided striper fishing trip. I'll put a pic up at the end.

I really enjoyed hunting in the team contest with all of yall. I hope that next year we will be giving em hell again.

I'll keep checking this thread and hope we can keep in touch. If any of yall want to come down to Oklahoma to try your luck I'll point ya in the right direction as best I can. I don't have private land but the public has been pretty good to me the last few years. I had a lease last year and I dropped it because the public land was just that much better.

Any way here is a pic of the stripers we caught, 10 of them was in about 15 min. 2 was at 24", 2 more at 20" and the rest were at 19" or just below. Texoma has a limit of only 2 over 20" per fisherman only 10 fish per person total.

Dang!! 1st anniversary out fishin!!! congrats man!! Thats awsome! Hope you have many more as good as that one. Spent my 1st anniversary in the hospital with our first born, think you got me beat in the fun department on that one!!!

Well, it's official, third place it is! Nice work boys, we gave em hell. Hope to see ya all here again next yr!

Great job everyone.