It sure was great to hit the turkey woods again. Took a cousin-in-law on a youth hunt yesterday and called up a nice longbeard for him and he dropped him at 17 steps. This joker was one of the smartest birds I've had to deal with. We got on some birds around 7:00 am and worked them almost into range pretty early, 4 strutters and 11 hens altogether. They were all too busy with each other to come closer than 70 yards so we hung tight and waited them out. After they all went out of sight we closed in on where they entered the woods and hunkered down. I hit my crystal call with a couple clucks and light yelps and got a good response not 60 yards from us just over a hill and out of sight. I gave a few muffled excited cuts and yelps on my mouth call and crystal at the same time and got a few hens fired up and more gobbles from the other strutters. After a few minutes of that, a fight broke out over the hill and the racket commenced. The hens were cheering them on and the boys were letting each other have it. Once the fight was over we got one gobbler hammering hard at my calls and could tell he was closing ground. His final gobble was probably from about 30 yards just over the hill, coming our way. He was so close we could feel the rumble.....dadgum I love it. About the time I expected him to top the hill right in front of us, the son of a gun flew up into a big oak tree above us to our left about 50 yards straight line from us to him. We had little to no cover between us so I was telling my shooter to be as still as he's ever been. The turkey walked up and down the limb, spinning around looking for the hen and surveying the area before he entered it. He even went into full strut for a few seconds and drummed a little. I didn't want to call bc he woulda pinned us and spooked for sure. With no decoys for him to see I had to try something, so I eased my hand up when he was turned the other way and completely covered my mouth. I gave the lightest muffled yelps that I could and one cluck, and I'll be danged if he didn't pitch down on the side of the hill not 20 yards down from us. As soon as he hit the ground he made a bee line straight for us and the winchester supreme stopped him in his tracks without a single kick. 10-1/2" beard, just less than 1" for spurs, and weighed right around 20lbs. Glad we were able to get that clever thinking longbeard out of the gene pool! Nice morning and now I'm looking forward to my turn.

congrtulations. nice gobbler

Great hunt. Congrats

good lookin bird

That is a real nice bird the young fella has got there!

Nice job, congrats

Wow. that's a nice bird! Congrats!

Cool deal... I'll bet he was looking for a gobbler... Make sure he didn't get his but kicked

Good looking bird! Love hunts like that, there the ones that really stand out in your memory and give young hunters a chance to see how to play with what your dealt.