**Updated With Video** New York Double

[njdevilsb]

*** It turns out my dads was a double beard, 9.75" and 7.5".  We didn't notice it until we were cleaning the birds.  Here's the video.  It's a little choppy in parts and goes black sometimes when it was laying in the leaves.  It gets kind of hectic right after I shoot first as my dad tried to get on his bird.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ3EaCcavNc ***  

Notice the gobbler at 1:25, about 5 yards to my left.  Later on when you see the strutters right before the shot, you can see the hen laying to their left.

Here's a picture of the double beard.  


Yesterdays opener only showed us 1 jake who gobbled 3 times.  We weren't expecting a whole lot though since we hadn't been seeing hardly any birds on our lease and we didn't have any roosted.  He came to about 20 yards, but he gets a free pass.

Last night we decided to try and roost some birds at another piece we have permission to hunt where we have only killed 1 bird before.  We saw 2 hens and a red head.  We didn't get a full view of him to know if he was a longbeard or not but we decided to give it a try this morning.  

We got setup around 5:10, and a bird started gobbling on his own at 5:30.  We called lightly a few times to let him know we were there, and he kindly replied to every sound we made.  It wasn't long before we had birds gobbling from all directions behind us.  These birds were fired up on the roost.  Any type of call we tried got a response and every crow that called got a response also.  Right around what we figured was fly down time they all shut up.  We would call every now and then just so they knew we were there and just waited.  Eventually we had a hen start calling back to us.  After a few minutes I let out a few yelps and she answered right on top of me.  She ended up coming out about 5 yards away from me and went out to the decoys clucking and yelping.  She got the toms fired back up and they were answering her every time.  We just sat there and let her do the calling and it worked perfectly.

She called in a tom from the other field to our right, but he didn't like something, maybe our strutter decoy, and went back where he came from.  Eventually two strutters came from the same direction as the first bird and they were strutting about 70 yards out, and two more longbeards came out to my left, but no shot.  They worked their way down to the first 2 gobblers just as four jakes gobbled and almost blew my hat off.  They came through the same place the hen did, at about 5 yards.  They went right up to our hen decoy and were walking around it, with one strutting his stuff as the four longbeards are still about 70 yards away strutting.  One of the hens had laid down right near our decoys.  Two of the longbeards lost interest in the situation and meandered into the woods.  The other two longbeards were heading the same way as the first two, so I let out some excited cutts and yelps and that was all it took.  They started gobbling again, one in full strut, working there way right to us.  Not a moment too soon either as I had been holding my gun for about 15 minutes while all this was going on and I don't know how much longer I could hold it.  As they got closer, the jakes wandered off.  The gobblers came in to about 31 yards and I had a clear shot at the strutter so I let the smoke roll out of the muzzleloading shotgun.  Once the smoke cleared there was a bird flopping.  I called some more and that stalled the second one long enough for my dad to get on him for a 43 yard shot.

My arm is very sore and stiff from how I was holding it for so long, motionless, with anywhere between 3-8 birds within 15 yards at any given time.  It was definitely worth it, and it was a great way to break in my new muzzleloading shotgun.  We got a lot of the action on video, which I will post later on after some editing.

Mine had a 9.5" beard with only 1 spur, which was about .5" long.  The other spur is broken off.  My dads had basically the same spurs, with a beard just shy of 10".  Between the shot and the flopping, my dads bird had lost quite a bit of his tail feathers which is why he isn't fanning hm out in the picture.

[Basser69]

Congrats on a nice double!! 

[Hognutz]

Very nice birds. Great story to go with it. Well done, Boys..Mike

[bowhunter84]

congrats!

[joey46]

Nice going!  Way to smoke him.

[vaturkey]

Congrats ! Great Father & Son Double !



       

[LX_Trkyhntr]

Congrats on the double with your dad!!  Great birds!!

[hobbes]

Congrats!

[strutnva]

good couple of birds

[trkycaller]

Nice!!

[Wrangler95]

 


Very nice going,congrats!!

[moonman]

 

[lmbhngr]

 

[boggszilla]

WTG on the double 

[JVA54]

         Congrats!!