Mottz

Nice bird Arjuna!! Went out today and had 4 different jakes in range but the toms were stuck with the hens. They'll slip up!

buckman11

Nice bird Arjuna! Congrats!

car

Nothing for me on the first day but wind and a little rain. Never heard that first bird. Calling for 20-30 mph with gust up to 45 mph for tomorrow. I'll go but not expecting much.

Zim

Surprise surprise. I did not expect to score with either of my Illinois tags since I was just using these to try out some public Id never been to. Well I found a spot while aerial scouting that looked promising. Went there yesterday morning and had a great hunt, viewing about a dozen birds, including three mature toms. One of these three was obviously dominant, easy to ID because three passenger side tail feathers were short/stunted. So this morning I returned and moved to a spot they favored. The two big toms beat me to the field but were way down 400 yards so did not spook. I put up a hen & gobbler decoys. They saw them but stayed henned up until 10:20 AM when they couldn't take it any more. The boss snuck in pissed off, spitting and charging until I layed the smack down on him from only 15 yards. No BB's in the meat! Haha. My heaviest turkey ever at 25# 0 oz. didn't score him yet. I am soaking in hotel tub with a very painful back. Score and photos coming.
This public property is right on the Mississippi River, near Pike County. These birds had obviously not been messed with. I was the only guy hunting the place.

Topgun 3006

Congrats Zim! I wondered what you've been up to lately and glad to see you're out after them. Isn't it neat when a plan works like that one did for you today?!!! Our season just started today and it's turned back to more like Winter again here than Spring and I'm just helping a friend and mentoring a kid next weekend until my tag is good on 5/4 for all of May.

Zim

TG,
You know I don't take turkey hunting too seriously. Mostly just an excuse to be in the woods. I have some good IL public properties I know where to go, but since I travel statewide for work I enjoy exploring, scouting & hunting new places. During this process I find many really bad places to hunt! Some of the worst. But if I am persistent I often find an acorn. I guess I just love the challenge of reading a place and cracking it. Doesn't always work out but to me it's fun.

Late season leftover Wisconsin tags are my money hunts. I got them figured out quite well there. So much so there I'm using a bow this year.

Mottz

Good deal Zim! Can't wait to see the pics!

Zim

Here he is. This was quite a hunt. Had to be real patient for all his hens to disperse back to their nests around 10 AM. Only then did he return to ruff up my cheap crappy tom decoy! I never had any luck with tom/hen setups for some reason but it worked like a charm yesterday. You can see the three short passenger side fan feathers that made him so easy to ID during my two days hunting the field. At first I thought these feathers were broken off, but they are just small.

The link they posted for the score calculator was dead but I think I scored this properly:

25# 0 oz.
10" beard
1 1/4" right spur
1 1/4" left spur
_______
25.0 + 20.0 + 12.5 + 12.5 = 70.0

Zim

Found this convenient stump sucker limb to hold scale. Look how pang pang his face is. That's my new mandarin word of the day. My fiancée is Chinese so I'm learning.

RPD63

Way to go Zim. Congrats