Done in RI
 

I had a delightful conversation with a young Tom this morning. He seemed confident on the roost, thundering at the unwanted owl hooting not 50 yards from where I parked my truck. He was equally vocal in our conversation. A little clucking, a little yelping, and a bit of silence all had him thundering away, yet he seemed reluctant to meet face to face. At one point, he did move away, but I reassured him that our meeting might be worth his while. He left the far end of wood lot getting further away, but circled around, ever so slowly making his approach. A tree to my right blocked all sight of him, but his increasingly loud gobbles announced he was interested in the plastic bobble-headed hen positioned 20 yards in front of me. It was a bit drizzly this morning, so when he finally made his appearance, the pencil thin beard was not impressive, but it was wet, after all. He continued gobbling and strutting while approaching from my right, but when he turned his back I took advantage of the opportunity. When he once again gazed in my direction, my sights were already settled on his neck. BOOM! our conversation was over. Thoroughly enjoyable. I do need to head back out to the truck and prepare him for dinner.

Sounds like a good hunt congrats ! As far as the beards go I don't put too much in that unless its a jake. A couple of years ago a buddy passed on a tom with a small beard because of the beard size. It just so happened that I had a couple close trail cam pics of the bird and his spurs made up for the lack of beard as they were easily 1.5 " When I showed him the pics he about cried and spend almost the rest of the season after that tom with no luck as he was sneaky old boy !

Nice when you can work them like that---Congrats on your success!

Turns out the beard was 10 1/8 inches. A bunch of strands were broken though.

This was very similar to yesterday's hunt, different Tom, different state but very similar hunt. A million things could go wrong, but when it all works out its a great feeling. Killed both birds almost to the same minute both days. Yesterday, I found out after the hunt someone else who has permission to hunt the same property didn't see my truck on his way in and he and his sons were listening to me working that bird up. They could have easily messed up my hunt. Today, As I'm carrying the bird back to my truck, a hen was walking across the field. If she was a few minutes earlier, That probably would have been that. I've been lucky this season though, 3 birds for 5 hunts a week and a half into the season. One tag left to go.

Congrats on your bird and the successful season you are having!

Good job on the bird.!

Congratulations on a successful hunt.

Another one down! Awesome.