Shotgun Success
 

I started off the morning with about 4 hours of sleep, I almost cancelled, it was colder (37), everything was wet with a heavy dew. I had to force myself out of bed.

As the sun was breaking, i could hear Tom's gobbling north, east, and south of me. I had a Hen come by and then 3 Jakes and another Hen arrived. Shortly after that, the local farmer showed up with the swather and all the birds left. I moved to another property and tried my call but never heard an answer.

I made my way home for a quick bite to eat and went for a drive around some of my other properties and spotted 5 birds in the same location as a week before. During that week, I had observed that the birds would turn and either follow the fence line or take a small cut that went thru a pasture. I gambled on the fence line because thats where that went last time.
After the 5/8 mile walk, i sat down to wait, about an hour later, I could see them coming thru the cedar that hid me. dang it! they were going to take the cut this time! The strutting Tom of the group presented a perfect side view from about 40 yards and I unleashed the magnum 2 3/4" #2's.
He rocketed almost straight up and fell just out of my view over the rise, the other birds just ran off aways and then followed in the direction he had gone. I slowly exited my ambush location and walked over the hill. I could see the fan of my Tom just behind a small cedar, as I approached, the other birds took off on the run and then flew away to my right. As i neared about 20 yards to the downed Tom, he took 2 steps and hit the air fast. I let him have another dose of #2's in the boiler room on the fly, there was a huge puff of feathers as he crashed to the ground in a heap. The walk back to the truck was just fine.