I went out Saturday and we had a plan for a bird my friend and Dad had seen the day before. That day, and last year as well, the gobbler would start on one side of the mountain and work around the south face (away from us). So this time we decided to loop around behind him. The old logging road we had decided to use had become choked with blow-downs sometime last year (looked like a tornado touchdown or micro-burst) so we were slower getting in than we anticipated. We bumped a hen off the roost at the end of the road and started climbing the mountain through a yard of heavily scratched leaves. It was already getting light and we heard the gobbler gobbling right where we expected. He gobbled three times and we were scrambling to set up. We couldn't agree on where to set up: I wanted to set up against a blowdown on the edge of a bench and my buddy thought we should go up a little further so that the gobbler wouldn't be able to see us until it was too late. We hurried up but the layout wasn't as good as it looked from below so we dropped back down to the original area. I was on my knees setting up a screen of pine branches when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. It was the red head of the gobbler. He had heard our walking and had hurried to us, not more than 20 yards away. I was hunting with a bow and my buddy was standing with his TC blackpowder on his shoulder. The gobbler walked 20 feet and then took flight. We climbed a bunch of mountains and tried to circle around him again but hit laurel thickets and never could locate him again.

We moved on from there and tried several other locations and found some good spots and heard some yelps and a jake gobble but never laid eyes on another bird. I've got some good ideas for future spots now and hopefully my execution will be better the next time I try for that first gobbler.

How did everyone else do?