I'll get the official measurements when I get home with a better tape.

The story on Bird 4 is ..

It was about 3:30 pm and I was fixing to head home but decided to stop at one more place to take a look. Across the road from the public land is a 640 acre private field that the grass the owner grows hasn't took in a few years. He also has cattle on it. This land is flat and yo can see completely across in all directions.

While driving up to the public unit there is a dang Tom strutting 30 yrds from the road on the private field. I make a turn and drive down a ways, hop out and sneak up to about 10 yrds from the fence line hoping I can entice him to come on over. Unfortunately he had some better looking girls than I so he wasn't budging. I ended up watching him feed away thru a cattle feeder pen and out of site behind an old house.

After packing up I drove down the road that went by the direction he headed and there he was a half mile down the fence line. I called the owner and as luck would have it he wasn't leasing out to hunters this year and he gave me permission to try a stalk.

I apparently lost the fan I had prepared for decoying in all the wind we had the last few days (40+ mph) so I grabbed the fan from the bird I had gotten Thursday, left everything else except a mouth call in the truck as I wanted to carry as little as possible, and headed for em.

I slid under the fence and crawled a half mile. There were cows between the birds and I and the preceded to walk down the fence line as well sometimes at a trot. This pushed the birds away to the far corner of the property which is a mile from the dang road.

At this point my knees had about gave up the ghost so I kept the fan open and squatted the rest of the way to about 180 yrds, All the while the cows got more curious and had a stare down with me. For a moment I though the boss bull was going to attack lol. When the cows walked off the hens (6 of them) that the Tom was courting started to slowly come my way so I sat beside a tree that was along the fence and waited it out. They passed by at about 50 yrds but the Tom was hanging 60 yrds or so back. Well he had 2 more hens that showed up out of no where. They decided to go a little wider than the previous 6 at about 70 yrds and the dang Tom followed but stayed at 63 yrds. When he got in front the 1st set of hens noticed me and alerted him. When he came out of strut and stuck that neck out I took the shot and dropped him there.

All in all probably one of the most exciting and rewarding hunts I have done. Took right at 3 hrs to make the stalk and was very luck to have it come together. His beard looks like it had been a little rotted. He only had 2 strands that made it the 8.25" the rest was right around 7" but the spurs are great for a Rio out there.