I am proud to have called in this Merriams tom for my 83 y-o hunting buddy Thursday. I had hunted two weeks ago up in the mountains here in Arizona by myself because my buddy was recovering from eye surgery, but I told him I'd take him back up this week if his doctor cleared him. He did, and loaded up my camper and headed up the mountain.
First morning, no gobbling on the roost like two weeks ago. So we walked our favorite road where I'd seen the most sign. We saw a recent set of gobbler tracks along with wing marks where Tom had strutted right in the road. We walked off the road a little and I heard a tom gobbling down in the bottom of a canyon. We set up, and I started calling with my new ghost cut mouth call. The gobbler bellowed again. I decided to move closer to the edge. Calling again yielded gobbles from two different toms! I stopped yelping and just did bubble clucks.
Then suddenly, I saw THREE gobblers coming up the hill, behind some spindly trees. I waited until one of them had its head between the trees and trained my muzzleloading CVA shotgun on it. Boom and the tom was flopping on the ground. I quickly motioned to my buddy to come over, because he had been hanging back. He ran down the hill a little to catch one of the other gobblers running to back down. He shouldered his 85 y-o Ithica double barrel 16 gauge and let loose its #4s. His tom fell immediately.
I was too busy watching my buddy take the second tom that I didn't look to see what happened to mine. When I walked over to where I'd shot it...no bird!! I walked back and forth, all the way down to the bottom of the canyon, looking around every blow-down, stump, etc. But still no bird. The shot had only been 10 to 15 yards, and all I can figure is that the tom might have ducked and I missed with my extremely tight pattern. Oh well, It made my day to have helped my buddy get his first!
