Congrats Scott, great bird, beautiful picture, and way to put us on the board!!!

Well guys, this morning my sisters boyfriend wanted me to go with him to look for some spots for his younger brother, him, and I to do some turkey hunting this year and to say that we got in to the birds would be an understatement. We started the morning off on his property. We parked on a gas line that runs across the top of a ridge which is lined in hardwoods. We parked the truck, rolled down the windows, and we were going to try an owl hoot to see if we could hear any birds but before we could even get the windows the whole way down the woods lit up. Two gobblers were going nuts about 100 yards straight down the hill from us. We listened for awhile when another bird lit up on the other side of the ridge from these birds, then another bird gobbled back the ridge behind us a few hundred yards, then a very faint, very very deep gobble came out from the bottom on the ridge about 200 yards below the first two that we heard. We sat there just listening to these 5 birds going crazy when I heard leaves crunching about 60 yards to the side of the truck when a group of 4 longbeards started walking across the ridge towards these birds from in front of us. 9 different birds from what we could tell. We were pumped. Next, we headed to another section of property that we have permission to hunt. We got out of the truck and crow called down into a valley of pine trees but didn't get an answer so we went to the other side of the hill and let out a crow call and we heard several birds gobble from the field below us. We moved around a bit and could see a bird strutting in the field. I watched the bird with my binos as my buddy let out another crow call and we heard gobbles, but it wasn't that bird. At this point we decided to sneek out the ridge to get a better look into this little field. Well, we get there and see 5 longbeards in full strut with one being an absolute monster. At this point we were probablly around 400 yards away so I couldn't see his beard, but he is definetly by far the largest bodied bird that I have ever seen. The 3 gobblers he was with all had full fans so they weren't jakes, and he was nearly twice their size. If I had to guess, I would say he was an upper 20lb bird, maybe 28 or 29 pounds! We kept our eyes on them and noticed that they had two hens with them, at this point we look out the ridge that we are on to our left and notice a hen walking up a fourwheeler trail, while watching her my buddy says "whats the black spot up and to the right of her in the brush?" Sure enough, another longbeard is on a bench on the hill in full strut. We decided to back out and just let them be and when we get back to the truck, we hear the valley of pines that we tried a crow call in come alive with atleast three more birds gobbling.
The last spot we checked was a piece of SGL's. We pull in and just glass the back end of a clover field and there are about 20 birds in the back corner with a few strutters in the mix (a bunch of hens though). We stopped back at his new house and when we pulled in there were two more gobblers about 100 yards behind his back yard gobbling. I get home and have the 3 gobblers from my property strutting in my back yard.

Today was a day for the books, and if it is any inclination on how season is going to go then I am PUMPED! I had to have heard over 500 gobbles this morning and saw over a dozen longbeards strutting!