First post so hopefully it won't be too bad..
I'm up at school in Clemson, SC and my girlfriend's family lives about 2 hours away in Saluda, SC. We had gone to Saluda once prior to this trip in an attempt to bag my first bird but it was Easter weekend and everybody just got too busy and we were unable to really get any hunt time in.
So last Saturday we went to Saluda, met up with her father, and headed out to an area where he had seen a few birds the week before and put out a decoy and took our positions. I was sitting about 15 yards from the decoy, with my girlfriend a few yards behind me and her dad was about 15 yards behind her. We started calling and immediately were hearing gobbles off in the woods. So after a five minute or so period of calling and gobbling back and forth I see two birds come out into the field approximately 150 yards away. One was strutting and the other just followed behind him. Another 10 minutes go by and they are now 75 yards out.
All of a sudden a jake comes out of the woods at full sprint and runs right past the toms and straight at me. At 50ish yards, he stops and the two toms start chasing him off. 10ish more minutes go by and the toms have now chased the jake off but in doing so they were back at the edge of the woods 150 yards from me. I was so nervous that the jake had ruined my chances and that they were going to go back into the woods. I didn't really know what to do, but before I could do anything, I heard a call from behind me.. my girlfriend's dad
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The birds were still interested and so we kept calling and they kept coming closer. My heart was going about a millions beats a minute and we now had the one that was strutting 35 yards from me and the other about 38 yards and I just couldn't wait any longer. I raised the 12 gauge Beretta Xtrema2 and right when I did this they both raised their heads and I knew they had seen me. I quickly aimed and squeezed the trigger. I was so focused on seeing one bird down that I did not even notice I had hit BOTH of them! I got up, put the gun on safety and laid it against the tree. By this time, my girlfriend and her dad were already yelling at how I had killed both birds. I thought they were messing with me but when I ran over, there lay two nice birds. The one that was strutting (I'm guessing the dominant turkey) weighed 19 lbs, had 1 inch spurs and a 10 1/2 inch beard. The second one weighed 18 lbs, had little bumps where spurs should have been so basically had no spurs, and had 2 beards! The first of its beards measured 10 inches and the second one measured 4 1/2 inches.
All of this calling back and forth, the jake coming out, and then the birds coming back in to me probably took about 45 minutes but to me it felt like 5 hours. I have never been more nervous and more excited at the same time. It was an experience I will NEVER forget! I'll tell ya this, I am definitely hooked on turkey hunting
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