After a rough opening day in Missouri, Skyler, Shawn and I headed back to our house and decided to check out a spot that was on fire last year. We hadn’t yet seen any birds there yet this year, but we had a feeling they might be there and we were right. We ended up seeing a big tom strutting with two hens and decided to set up a blind there for this morning. Last night we tried roosting the birds but he wasn’t gobbling at all.
So this morning Shawn, our buddy Josh, and I slipped into the blind before dark and were relieved to find that the big gobbler had roosted there the night before. He gobbled a bunch before flying down. Within 15 minutes he was cresting the hill coming our way. He saw the decoy, strutted up and came trotting in. About that time we were surprised to look over and see another big gobbler down the field. The bird in the decoys walked around the decoy and when he turned around Shawn quickly drew his bow and shot. The arrow hit its mark and the bird hobbled over the hill and crashed on the edge of the woods. That’s when the other tom took off sprinting towards Shawn’s bird and started flogging it. We quickly switched up and tried calling him back in, but he wouldn’t leave the dead bird. Eventually the hens moved off the other way and he followed.
We could hear him gobbling in the distance as we called to him, but it didn’t sound like he was coming closer. About that time Josh saw two red heads coming over the hill. We initially thought that they were gobblers as they were all strutted up, but they turned out to be two big jakes. They came right into the decoy all curious and after a few minutes they decided to move along.
We could still hear the gobbler in the distance but he didn’t sound too close…at least we thought. I was texting on my phone spreading the good news when I looked up and saw his white head sticking up. The huge tom came running into the decoy and immediately started spurring it. He beat it until the wings fell off and then beat it again. He was moving around a bunch, so I waited for him to hold still and I released the arrow smacking him right in the wing joint. He dropped and started flopping right there in the decoys.
Talk about an amazing morning! This is mine and Shawn’s first double ever and we never would have thought it was going to happen this morning when we didn’t even know if there was one gobbler in this timber. Big thanks to Josh for playing puppet master!
