As promised I will fill you guys in on my week. I will save you the read because I ate my second season tag and it wasn't because I didn't hunt hard.
The first two days of season I was in Tampa, FL. visiting my two young sons that recently moved down there with their mother. (Yes, I will be moving as well shortly.) Opening morning of second season my cousin calls and lets me know that he missed one and the birds where hot. I flew back in to Indianapolis airport on Monday and got some birds roosted for the next morning hunt. Get back to the woods Tuesday morning and nothing....not the first gobble after putting 3 to bed. I'm still puzzled as hell on that one. I did manage to call in 3 different hens in 1 hour in that woods. We hunted a couple other spots and called in single hens in both spots. 1 o'clock came and we went to lunch. Tuesday night we went to another spot that I have permission to hunt (this is where the story gets interesting) and put one to bed again. Wed. morning we slip in there bright and early and upon first gobble we are within 75 yards of this birds roost and he is hot!!! He was double gobbling by himself on the roost. I could barely see through the woods and this bird goes silent and I know he is on the ground, but can't believe it. I look at my cousin and I utter the words, "He's on the ground and when he gobbles the first time I'm gonna pour it on him." No sooner did I get that out and BOOM!!! Scared the bejesus out of both of us. We grab our dekes and walk back to the truck wondering where this person parked that shot our bird. So we wait and this guy comes pulling up and immediately jumps out and starts accussing us of tresspassing. I quickly cut this joker off and let him know that he is in fact the one tresspassing and he was set up across the property line by at least 100 yards. He begins to back peddle on his story and I tell him that I had better things to do, but I would notify the landowner and they could hash it out. I peek in the guys truck and there lies our bird. He had at least and 1 1/4" spurs and probably a 9" beard. (Mind you the bird is in the back of his truck untagged) I let him know he ought to tag his bird, got his liscense plate number and then we left. We go to another spot on the Embarrass River (hunt12ga knows where this is) and I walk down the long lane while my cousin sits in the truck because he is still disgusted with what just happened. I walk down there and let out a few yelps and one immediately fires back. I run back to the truck and we get our stuff and start towards the river. We get set up with the dekes in the food plot and I start calling and as soon as he answered I knew we were in trouble. He was on the other side. After an hour of him going crazy I knew he wasn't flying over. I called everyone that I knew that had a boat and no one was home. We talked it over and decided that we were going to swim the river (its very small). I get my boots and socks off and took the first step and the water was freezing! No way was I gonna do that! We called it quits for the day. Thursday morning found me on a new bird that I knew had 2 hens with him when he flew up to roost, but I was running out of options. After an hour of calling the next morning the lead hen came in on a string and the gobbler and the boss hen circled just out of gun range to my back side. I was so disgusted I almost pumped a load into my decoy after they walked off. I followed that bird all morning hoping he would leave that hen, but it wasn't the case. It seemed like all odds where stacked against me all week and I completely hunted my rear end off. Only one day did I give up before 1 o'clock. I was in bed every night before 9pm and up at 4:30 am.
I did however have a very good week with family and friends. We slammed some absolute monster crappie and found a few mushrooms. I will be hunting again this weekend and next week in Indiana with my dad and IL. 4th season as well. It's about an hour drive to the spot in Indiana to my spot in IL. Surely I can luck out on one of these two states. Hopefully in Indiana for sure considering the price I paid for the tag!!!
Sorry for the let down, but believe me, it wasn't the lack of trying.