opening day NJ bird down
 

Of course it would be raining on opening day right? What else is new. Well despite the weather, today turned out to be an awesome and totally unexpected hunt. This story goes back to last year when I was setting up my decoys in front of my blind that i had made and then all of a sudden there's two guys whistling and waving their arms in the air letting me know their sitting in my blind. Awesome. So this year it was me and my dad going out to the same spot and i made the blind look like the taj mahal of all blinds so that people would know i was serious and that i'd be back. Well we show up to find a huge tree branch that had broken was laying right in front of my blind. Me and the ol' man decided we had no choice but to move it while trying to be quiet. After we moved the huge branch and sounded like a freight train we settled into the blind at least an hour before the sun started showing what it could today. The sun rises and an hour goes by...not a gobble the whole time. Surprisingly we had 5 hens roosted only 40 yards from where we set up the decoys and despite all of the noise and commotion they stayed put and actually flew down into our decoys. they amused us for at least 40 minutes. Then all of a sudden the rain stopped out of nowhere and we hear a gooble. so we give a few yelps back and this bird sounds fired up...he mustve been about 400 yds away when we first heard him. Well, within 5 minutes he was at 100 yards and once he got a good look at the pretty boy it was all over. He put on an awesome show and strutted and gobbled the whole way in. After he danced around the pretty boy and slapped around one of our jake decoys i told my dad "now!" so he gave a quick yelp on the slate call and this boy made his last gobble. as he stuck his neck out i gave him a nice dirt nap. The bird wasnt anything huge but it put on such a good show that i had to take it. 19lbs, 9 inch beard, 1" spurs. (sorry about the long post)

hey yo need to check in on Team 3 Tom Tippers - almost forgot about you and we needed this score - good job - let us know if you got another!

JW

Your score is 19 + 10 + 15 + 18 = 62

Absolutely nothing wrong with that bird! Good job.

decent bird. GREAT STORY ; ). Often times to story and memory are far more rewarding than the trophy. I'd say, almost all the time.

awesome! Congrats on a fine bird!

congrats!!!!!

Congrats on your Gobbler!

thanks a lot guys. goin for #2 in the morning

Congrats!!! Great looking turkey!!! :) Enjoyed the story too!


Kim :)

Staying in line with what kirch said, it's the memories out there that matter, the bird is just a bonus. Way to go!