Hey Pins lets get some measurements. Every bird counts. Well I got confirmed Friday the 23. And this weekend is a no show really. Thunderstroms all weekend. A storm that is suppose to be comin in is so bad that the fire dept. has had 2 mettings on getting prepared for it. Hopefully the trukeys will head for the hills.

20lbs 7 ounces
8 1/4 inch beard
matching 1 inch spurs

The first three days of my season have been a rainy mess. On Friday I had two birds fly down fairly close to my position and respond to my calls, but after a while they refused to gobble again and I never saw them. It rained hard yesterday and today so I really didn't see too much action except for trying to call in another hunter's decoy when I was relocating.
I also noticed I was sitting next to what I thought was a deer dump next to my tree. As i walked away I saw that there was used toilet paper nearby. Thought I would share that too.

Hey all, the Massachusetts season opened this morning. I shot a nice tom. I will submit the stats and post some pictures this afternoon after it's check in. Go team #1

Nice job one shot. Think we are making our run now. I sitll have a couple weeks to try and up my previous bird. Keep it up and lets go.

I sent the stats to mouthcaller, so here they are as promised. 18lbs, matching 1" spurs, and two 10.5 inch beards with a third skinny little beard on the way. What a rush it was calling in two birds this morning. Just when all hope was gone and they had shut up on me a few times they finally came in. I had looked at a thread yesterday someone had asked how many years it took for people to get their fist bird. The largest response was three years. I guess that is the lucky number because this is my third year hunting turkeys. Go Team#1

One shot was all it took.

Hi Team

Very sorry for being AWOL lately. Still haven't killed a bird yet - been a strange year. I'll be back tonight to provide updates regarding all my misery this spring. Not giving up yet though.

Nice job Pex, Huntress and Hog. I'll get the scores posted today.

Tom

Tomorrow is my last chance at a turkey in Illinois. The other hunters I have seen out there have also been having little luck, which stinks. I will be driving up to Michigan this Thursday to try and fill my Michigan tag. I'm hoping I will have better luck since I will be hunting private land.

Keep at it BigBuck.
Awesome oneshot, you must've gotten a pic of a bird like that, post'em up.
Welcome back Tom.
Good luck outdoor.

My season is open, but working like a dog and I live in the city. Hopefully I'll have something to report after this coming weekend.

Congrats to all who has taken a bird.Still trying hard and been busy working on my first truck get to start driving next month.Good luck guys.

One SHot

Please post a picture of that turkey. How long was the third beard??

MC

Okay so here are the pictures. I'm new at this so I'm going on what the guy told me when I checked in the Bird. It was 18lbs then he told me it was 10.5" double beard with one inch spurs. But it also has another little beard, in the picture you can see it. Does that little beard count also? I Hope that I put my stats in correct, if not maybe you guys can set me straight.

that beard is longer than 10.5", its measured from the base to the tip of the longest single strand. I can can see strands that are wavy reaching 10.5, straighten them out when you measure use the longest single strand.

The little beard does count, but I wonder if that's what the guy was referring to when he told you double beard? Are there two separate defined bases to the big beard? Its hard to tell from the photo but it looks like just one. If the big beard is really two beards then you have a triple bearded turkey, measure all three, if the large one only originates from one base its a double beard , big one and small one, measure both.

Congrats on a great bird.

nice bird and keep it up team

Hey oneshot, just to clarify what I was talking about, here is a pic of my double from last year. They are close together but you can see that there are two distinct beards. If the bases of your long one are like this you have a triple, but if the big one only has one base its a double.
If the big beard is two based and your bird is a triple measure all three carefully, and re-measure your spurs to 1/8 ". You could be a contender for highest scoring bird in the contest. Either way its a high scoring turkey.
Congrats again, glad your on our team.

Okay I took more pictures of the Beard. I have a couple of beards that I got from a friend. The base from my bird is twice the size of these beards. It looks like the big beard is one large base it measures 11" to the longest single strand. The little beard measures 6 5/8" to the single longest strand. I also have the pictures of the spurs up. One is clearly 1" long. The other is 1 1/16" do you round that up the the nearest 1/8"? I do want to thank you all as I'm new at this scoring stuff.

Oneshot, looking at the this pic I think we'd have a hard time arguing a triple, your bird has one giant paintbrush of a beard and a sweet kicker to make him a double. And my bad, measurements are to 1/16, I'm a metric Canadian.
Tom, (captain Mouthcaller) knows a lot more than I, but I see your bird scoring 73.875, VERY nice for the team. Most toms are 45-65 pts.
Thats 4 for us so far Everyone, lets keep the momentum going!

Birds are henned up hard in VA.

Hunted wednesday and today (Thurs). Heard five diff birds gobble about 100 times in total on the limb yesterday... hit the ground and might have heard 10 gobbles the rest of the day. Went after one of them... hen took him away down the field. Once agian... on the other side of the swamp.

This morning I hunted the property my dad shot his wompus turkey at opening day. He has been back once since then and let a 2 yo bird go. Not knowing the property, I went where I was told. Didn't hear a turkey, see a turkey, see a turkey track, find a turkey feather, or step in a pile of turkey crap.... Nada. Nothing. Dad worked a bird that he described as one of the biggest he has ever seen. Called him across a cattle pasture to a fence at 80 yards... bird wouldn't go under the fence of course. Pops is convinced this bird is substantially larger than the one he killed opening day.

Only action I had this morning was a coyote chased a rabbit out into the path. Rabbit went stroking by me and I had the gun up cause I saw the thing coming out. Yote stopped in the middle of the damn road... and I had one big pine I left intentionally between me and the road so I could make a quick adjustment if a bird walked in from out in front. Thats what the yote stopped behind and all I could see was his tail and a back leg. I was expecting him to go at one of my decoys or chase after the rabbit he had flushed out... but instead he turned tail and went straight back away from there.... which wasn't very sportsmanlike of him.

Two weeks left... this has been the second worst (cause last year when I only got to hunt once was way worse) season I've ever experienced. Had a slam dunk on the first hunt and have not seen or worked a bird in the 8 or 9 hunts since then. Been hunting in some awesome places too.... hopefully my luck will turn before the season runs out... get to start hunting hunting all day in May.

TS, 73.875 is what I came up with last night on the NWTF website. I believe it to be just one wide as you say (paintbrush) size beard. 73.875 Is what it should be then. I will PM mouthcaller and let him know. Thanks agian.

Gobbler #2 down! definatly going to replace this one with the last... I got in under this guys roost and was there for maybe 10 minutes last night when I started to hear crunch crunch crunch... they kept getting louder and the I saw a gobbler with what looked like its beard to be dragging on the ground, but that ended up being cause he was kindof hunched over while walking... anyways I had a hen decoy out and made a couple calls, but there was no use calling since he was headed right for me, so I just stayed quiet. pretty soon, there another big boy behind him! not quiet as big, but still well over a 9" bearded tom, so the first one came within 40 yards of me... I just had a full choke and steel #4's so I was hopeing that would be enough because he wouldn't come into the decoy, he seemed to be heading somewhere else before he got in his roost. Anyways, I wasn't gonna wait for him to come back so I shot and dropped him right there in his tracks!

17lbs 9 3/4" beard(my biggest!!!!!!) R spur 7/8" L 5/8"

NWTF score 17.1875 + 8.75 + 6.25 + 19.5 = 51.6875

Awesome hog.Tn Season is slow. Saturday we had a record 11 inches of rain in about 10 hours. Flooding was bad. Real bad.We were trying to get to a friends house because they were out of town and we cloudn't. We waded what used to be a street but became a river up to my knees with quite a current. Road after road was closed and got washed out. Sinkholes were reported. A sonic restaraunt had water all the way up to the speakers you order into. An automotive dealership had all of its cars 2 inches away from being completley submerged. Remember this is all rain. Its not like it was a river flooding or something it was all rain. Thankfully no one was hurt.

Welcome zmax hunter. Mouthcaller will you pm him and let him know what team he is on. Thanks

Hey Tom, I know you've been busy so I took the liberty of PM'ing zmax.
All I heard was a hen Saturday, saw some deer. Its still early for me tho.

I'll tell pops about Zmax. The season is just goi ng to get tougher from here on out.

zmax hunter checking in,...thats alot of pages to catch up on, lol....Congrats to all of you who have put the birds down this season. I have 1 tag left to fill and dozens of birds with which to choose. my season will end May 31st.
This is truly my first year to spring hunt for Turkey, I have learned so much between several different forums.

Here is a link to my first Bow kill.
http://huntingnet.com/forum/turkey-h...d-gobbler.html

His NWTF score is,....

18.5 + 8.75 + 8.75 + 17 = 53

I think it is time to break out the shotgun on my next Tom.

Do I enter this bird into the contest since I am an alternate and I already killed him? Or do I enter the next bird I kill? Thanks

Welcome zmax, and congrats.
I'm pretty sure your bird counts as I saw that JW and Arrow put out a call for more alternates "regardless if you've already killed a bird or not", but it will be your biggest bird come end of your season that counts.
We'll leave it up to our captain to sort that out though, captains do the reporting so that birds don't get counted twice.
Welcome to the team.

Thank you for the warm welcome,...Someone ? mod? want to change my status and give me the BOLD.. Thanks

I drove past a HUGE tom this evening on the way home, i sure hope some road hunter didnt come along. He was all strutted up not 20 yards off the road. He is about a 1/2 mile from some property i hunt,..and appeared to be possibly headed in my direction....thinking i should see if i can get permission from the owner of the location i saw him,..we'll see, best guess is an 11" beard, very thick, and i swear i could see spurs! He was standing in a pasture that the cows have mown off awefully short.

Good luck this weekend guys,..aim small!

I'll be out again this weekend, possibly as early as tomorrow night or friday night. We can hunt till 7 so its all about dodging managers and jobs. Definately out there saturday. Friends GF saw them crossing the road to their side today, onto a neighbouring farm but at least i know they are in the area/calling distance.
Cheers and good luck all.

Still out there hunting. Just haven't seen a bigger bird yet. Not shooting another unless it looks like it will replace my last score. Later team

This could possibly be our last weekend.. Weather is warm and on the few times dad has gone in the week he has heard nothing. We are giving it one last go and hopefuly make it count.

(geez how many times have I said hopefully this year)???

Shotgun Success!
 

Bird #2 on the ground, He was the strutting Tom who accompanied 2 hens and 2 other Tom's.

He wont add many points, but he is better than my first by a fraction,....

18.75 + 8.75 + 8.75 + 18 = 54.25

I earned the cold one today!

congrats zmax.
I hear you doall, I've only gotten out a few times but each was rainy and windy, not able to hear anything.
Yesterday was pretty cool tho, within two hours I had a hen at 20yrds, a coyote at 10yrds, and a small velvet buck at 15yrds, of course i didn't have the camera with me.

I still have a few more hunts ahead of me, hopefully they will be in better conditions than the last.
Good luck everyone.

Great zmax! El padre is on a buisness trip so ill tell him to update when he gets back. Yesterday was a good day for me not my dad thogh. We split up, and after 5 min. of daylight I hear one on what might be what we call smyth ground. I didn't go over there because I didnt want to get to far from dad then dad wouldnt know where I was and I dont have a cellphone, and other problems. Turns out I could have but what can you do. Long story short he eventuall shut up and wouldn't cross a 500yd field. I did call up a hen and saw a coyote, fox, and deer. So a pretty good dayhe however saw, heard nothing.

Well season is ending today. Had a fun season just not the hot year I was hoping for. Well for those of you still hunting good luck team. Later

Definately a dissapointing season again for me this year. So many people hunting turkeys now that have no idea what they are doing. I was fortunate to get access to over 1000 acres of land, the only problem is that on both tracks... there was one other hunter allowed to hunt (two sep land owners... two seperate dummy's... not like its anyone I know).

When you have people running all over the land every single day... you don't hear much gobbling. Between the 90 degree temps... the insane amount of pressure from golf cart hunters..... and the haneous amount of hens... I only saw 2 turkeys this spring... and they were both on the first hunt of the year when I blew an easy opportunity.

Things certainly aren't what they used to be.

So is that it for your season Swamp, or can you still get out there?
This weekend will probably be my last chance, and they are calling for rain again! I have not had a single hunt where it wasn't raining. I the turkeys are out there but can't hear anything and I guess they can't hear my either. I've seen one hen the whole time I've been out. Not giving up though, not till season is over.

Hey Mouthcaller?
I hope your dad is OK doall.
I guess his new position at work is keeping him away because its not like him to be so absent during the contest.
Anyways, by my tally we have 7 birds for 5 hunters. It would be nice to get the newer ones checked in because I hate seeing our name at the bottom of the list.

I'm out there again this weekend, in the rain, again. But hey, thats hunting, and its not quite over yet...

Dads ok he is preoccupied with work. Season is don here in TN. As far as chances and encounters go we had a great season. But we never really took the safety off. Dissapointing, but hubmling.