On the Florida opener I hunted a friends property near Live Oak. Day one started with rain and I was more than happy to hide out in a elevated box blind to stay dry. After the rain quit I moved to a natural ground blind and soon saw 2 hens walk by along the pasture edge. I slipped along till I located them along with the gobbler that was courting them. A few courtesy gobbles and he took his hens and left. The afternoon I spotted 4 hens followed by a gobbler about 200 yards out. A few yelps and he gobbled. Another series of yelps and he turned and spotted the decoys. Things were looking good as he kept heading my way, sounding off at my clucks now. At about 80 yards he went into full blown strut mode, did a couple spins, looked at the decoys and walked away. I cut back into the woods to get ahead of him. He continued to answer my calls, but obviously had a destination in mind. He put on one heck of a display about 300 yards out in a little green field before heading towards his roost. My friend told me to try out his new Ghost Blind for the morning hunt. To say I was skeptical was an understatement, I mean that thing was 4 mirrored panels. No way something so ridiculous was gonna work...or would it? We set it up after dark and stashed my decoys behind it for the morning hunt.
A bird gobbled from the roost several hundred yards out and I hoped he would work my way after flydown. I had him gobbling and closing the distance then all went quiet. Suddenly I see something running across the pasture and a quick look through my binos showed a gobbler high tailing it like the Devil was on his tail. I yelped as loudly as I could to see if he would stop and was shocked when a second bird gobbled at what sounded like about 100 yards. This was soon followed up by a hen just pitching a fit. Whatever she did, I copied. That only made her madder. So I started to cut off her yelps with cutts. Wow did she flat out loose it. The gobbler went silent, so I went with low clucks and purrs. Suddenly to my right a black beach ball with a glowing head came running in and stopped beak to beak with my jake decoy. The picture of me peering through that Ghost Blind was the last thing he never saw. BOOM, game over.
I used a couple new calls on this hunt including a Hooks Executioner 2 diaphragm and a Rebel Yelp Outfitters crystal with aluminum on the bottom. Hope this works on this weeks Osceola adventure that team mate Black Magic and I will be going on.
My heaviest bird to date going 19 lbs with an 11 1/8" beard and a matching set of 1 1/4" spurs which scored 66.125
A couple more.
Man that's awesome! Congratulations and good luck on the Osceola!
Congrats on a great Tom! We're on the board, Great job! :jackson:
Congrats on your Gobbler. :firefighter:
Awesome job ... the team is on the board!! :happy0064:
Nice gobbler brother!! Congrats!! :icon_thumright: :icon_thumright:
Congrats again bro! Great bird!
If we don't get one this weekend it won't be from lack of effort. After last weekends frustrations, i'm looking forward to the hunt.
Nice job!
Thanks guys. That's gonna be a tough one for me to improve on...but it won't keep me from trying. :icon_thumright:
Nice, congratulations.
Fine bird. And the blind looks pretty cool too. Wait til a Tom comes up to fight one in the mirror!
Congrats on the icebreaker! And nice hooks too.