Kinda,workin backwards sharing a few of my hunts this year with all the gang, as I was pretty busy guiding hunts and tryin to find time to hunt myself!Didn' t have much time to sit down at the ole putor as most of my time was nap city!Early hours and roaming the hills after longbeards can be draining!Anyway,here in Calif we have a pretty liberal limit compared to a lot of you all being able to harvest 3 toms in the spring!Told you all about my 3rd bird as I was pretty excited about taking my second 4 bearded bird ever!Sorry BT,theres one out there with your name on it eventually buddy!!My second gobbler this spring was I guess what you might call a classic as he and his companions came in right off the roost!It was the second week of our season which is early april and the weather was brutal for a few days and had drastically effected the amount of gobbling activity!Most birds were gobbling a little later in the morning when things would warm up a bit,and I believe the amount of hunting pressure didn' t help much either!We finally hit a weekday morning that broke nice with no wind!Having scouted these birds and knowing where the roost site was from prior years hunts and scouting trips really gives a hunter an edge on knowing which direction the birds are most likely to pitch out of the roost telling you as the hunter the best place to set-up!Dont know about you all but I watch and pay close attention to the weather through the course of the season,reading the paper and of course the internet help a bunch in this area.In many instances mother nature can dictate not only how you hunt in your approach to an area that may have a gobbler in it but where to hunt too!Windy days we' ll drop off the ridges and hunt the bottoms and so on!Weather also dictates your dress none of us like to freeze to death,get soaked,or leave cloths along the way because we' ve overdressed and are sweating to death!Anyway sorry for rambling,but I believe its good advice to pay attention to the weather not just because you may get wet.
Anyway we hit a beauty of a morning still as a mouse and we could hear a good distance!Anytime the weather is like this I make it a point to hit the woods earlier than normal because in alot of cases the birds will start sounding off earlier not having to worry about the next wind gust blowing them off the limb as they raise that tailfan to strut on the limb!Sure enough as I made my way into the area I wanted to set-up they started gettin it on!I used the cover of darkness and eased in about a hundred yards from the roost and set-up!It was an awesome sunrise as a trio of gobblers lit the predawn darkness up with gobbles ringing up and down the canyon they were roosted in!Because this particular flock of birds were still grouped up and there was really no one dominant gobbler I decided to use a jake and 2 hen decoy set-up and see what would happen!The birds were roosted on a canyon edge where a small ridge that came from the bottom of the canyon came up into contact with the top or edge of the canyon!It created a small bowl area that had a few digger pines in that the birds were roosting in!Knowing that most of the hunters approached them from the top I chose to come from the bottom on that small ridge and set-up slightly down hill from them on top of the ridge where it flattened out a bit!I sat there and just listened to these birds gobble for about 50 minutes always amazed at how fast there reflexes are when one gobbled the others would too almost sounding like one gobble!As I expected close to fly-down I heard a hen,then another one,and another,and you get the point!I started my calling soft to get a feel for not neccasarily what the gobblers reaction were but the hens!One hen began to talk to me and before you know it we had a full flegded conversation going!She pitched out to my right against the ridge I was on and right behind her came a steady rush of wings as about 8 other birds landed right with her including my gobblers!They were about 60 yards out and after a little soft talk began to step up out in front of me on the top of my ridge!The hens peered my way as the gobblers incoherent of what was about to take place had all there attention on the ladies and put on quite a show!I clucked a couple of times and gave a soft series of 3 yelps and one of the hens began to ease down the ridge in my direction with the whole group following.As she got closer one of the strutters finally noticed the decoys!He immediately headed right at the jake deke with one of his buddies also in hot pursuit!Having my gun already on my knee pad pointed at the jake deke, it was only a matter of seconds before I was on the lead gobbler!The dekes were at about the 20 yard mark and as he came right up to the beak of the jake deke he broke strut and I believe was going to introduce himself in a rather rude manner but the load of #4' s sent him tumbling over backwards!Not every morning in the turkey woods is filled with gobbling birds and all the excitement that comes with a hunt like this,but when it does happen it makes all those tough frusterating mornings so much easier to endure and turn those negatives into trying to find the positives!!!Here' s a pic all!Enjoy21#' s...10 3/4 beard....1/3/16 spurs