RE: Team 4
I went out saturday morning and had gobblers surrounding me. I was in a river bottom pasture and had 1 big tom to the east and a bunch to the west. At first light the one to theeast flew down into my pasture about 400 yards away and started strutting. A few minutes later a hen came from some willows to the west and went over and joined the strutting tom. A short while later she was followed by a tom that skirted around me, flew across the river to a different hen and continued east. The hen he flew to flew across to my side and joined the strutting tom. About 10 minutes later a hen and big tom come out from the willows and start heading east and they are in range. (bowhunting). I get set and the tom kinda heats up and is half strutting. I pull back and make sure that my broadhead will clear the blind window and get him to raise his head. I hit the release and the arrow shoots down into the ground 5 yards infront of him and he just stands there and then walks off. I look and there is a neat 1/2inch cut in my blind window[:'(]. That tom and hen continue to head east to the strutting tom. I watch them stand off and just as they are getting ready to kill each other the tom from across the river comes sprinting in wanting some of the action. The two big toms then chase him around the field for a minute before going back to strutting. I now have 3 toms in the field with me. I call fairly aggressively to try to get their attention away from there hens when the willows errupt with a GIANT gobble. A few seconds later 4 more toms show up and skirt around me and take off running to the other toms and proceed to chase them around and then all 7 toms started strutting around the hens. They continue for a couple hours as the occasional hen comes in from the willows and walks off to join the flock. They finally start comeing back when a farmer starts working in the field over by them. There is a hen behind me just standing around doing nothing and the lead tom sees her and comes running in and starts strutting about 35 yards away behind us[:'(]. the rest follow in and start strutting around all the while ignoring my pleas on the slate to come over and destroy my b-moble. They all end up leaving and we call it a day. What a great hunt. I cannot wait to get back out there. As far as I know I didnt educate any of them. I did learn that I will only be having my one breeding hen decoy out next time though.
Sorry for the long post...