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Here's the story!

By 7:15 a.m. on the first morning, my first 'guidee' had 2 turkeys in the bag...with one shot. They were the first 2 he had ever taken. It was nice to see someone that has sacrificed so much for us and our country with a smile you couldn't beat off of his face.

That evening I got to take another hunter out. It wound up being pretty uneventful because the neighboring property owner was utilizing his easement through the property most of the afternoon...cutting off the turkeys and pushing them away from our location. It was completely inadvertent, but the hunter was still understandably disappointed...as was I.

The next morning, we got out there at daylight with toms sounding off all over the riverbottom. We set up quickly and got our decoys positioned for the direction from where we thought they would approach. They must have gotten 'henned-up' quickly because they were staying just out of sight and refusing to step out of the woods.

At about 9:00, I decided to go get closer to a group of gobblers that were about a 1/4 mile away to see if I could get them to follow me back to the blind location. As I got closer to them, I saw what was keeping them from coming on over to us...a large slough and a thick patch of saplings. I worked my way through the saplings as quietly as I could toward the toms and a divider fence that separated the landowner's cattle pasture from his 'wildlife area', which is actually just an area that he hasn't grazed in a while because his fences are down. The toms were down the fenceline about 100 yards and gobbling at everything that made a noise. They soon made their way my direction and walked right by me at about 15-20 yards...3 beautiful toms with about 8-9 inch beards. I let them walk on past me and I backed off of the fenceline once I felt they could not see me. As soon as I reached an area that was somewhat open, I began calling to them and moving away; hoping they would follow me. I got back to the blind and told Rance and his wife about the toms. We waited and heard nothing of those birds for quite a while, so I began thinking about what I could do at that point. I figured that there had to be an opening along the ridge to the north of where I had been earlier that led to the fence that was mostly just broomsedge and blackberry, so I was considering backtracking and trying it again. The only problem was that there wasn't much cover there to hide me if they did follow. About that time, we heard them gobble and they were still obviously on the other side of the fence. I called sparingly while preparing to try the ordeal once again. About 5 minutes later when I was just about to leave the blind, we heard them gobble again and they had cut the distance between us in half. They were headed toward us. Soon, all 3 were sneaking out of the broomsedge meadow and into the field in which we were located. Unfortunately, we still had the decoys set up for the direction we had anticipated the birds would approach from for earlier that morning. They hung up at about 60 yards behind the blind because they couldn't see them, so they made a big half-circle out of range to the north to get a better perspective. When they did, they saw the decoys, but they also saw something with which we could not compete...a live hen a couple hundred yards away in the opposite direction. My hunter was both thrilled at the sight of them and a little disappointed that it did not work out. We could hear them following that hen around for a good 45 minutes, gobbling like crazy. I took that opportunity to reset the decoys to where they could be seen from several different directions of approach.

After that, we didn't hear a thing for a while and were considering calling it a morning when we heard a gobble that was VERY close...so close that I couldn't tell from what direction it came. I thought it was in front of the blind and the hunter's wife thought it was behind the blind. A second gobble verified, for me, that it was in front of the blind, just inside the woods. That's when Linda, the hunter's wife, stood up to look out the back window of the blind and excitedly whispered, "There he is!" I turned around to see a big, beautiful tom in full strut. Rance quickly repositioned himself and got ready to take a shot out the back of the blind. Since Linda had been given a camera by the people of 'Wild Oklahoma' to record the hunt and she could not see well from where she was, the camera was quickly thrust into my hands. I recorded the tom coming in and called as Rance got ready for the shot. While this was going on, the tom that was in front of the blind was responding to my calling, so we had actually been hearing 2 birds before...one in front and one behind. It did not matter at this point though because Rance put the bird down as soon as he had a clear shot at a distance of about 40 yards. All the hard work and waiting had paid off with an awesome Rio/Eastern mix (mostly Rio) that weighed about 23 lbs, had ~7/8" spurs and about a 10 1/2" beard. I think I was about as proud of that bird as any I had taken myself...as well as the ones that Bill had taken the day before. It's not something I'll soon forget and I have been very affected by it because of how much it meant to those 2 guys. [/align]