Another wet morning...
Buddy had a farm he could hunt down the road from me and I told him I'd take a look and see what's out in the fields after work. Get there and see a good one out in the field and convince my buddy to go hunt the farm in the am.
Get there in the am and brought a blind for him to hunt the field where I saw the tom and I ventured into the woods where I've heard birds roosting in the past.
It's 6:15 and I have not heard a thing but my buddy has 4 gobbling none stop behind him and I get greedy and I decided to sneak back his way. Of course I spooked 3 hens and a Tom off the roost like a dumb dumb. Watched where they flew and headed to where my buddy was. I get there and my buddy is in a rock break and there was no way I was able to cut over his way with the chance of spooking birds. I hear the birds Gobble and it sounded like a tom and some jakes.... so I decided to go back where I busted the birds off the roost and head to where I saw the birds fly to.
Find a good tree that I can hide from the rain and settled in. I didn't use any decoys because I didn't feel like carry them around. Called with a raspy diaphragm call because it was to wet to take out the pot calls and I listened while the rain kept falling.
Around 930 the rain starts to settle down and I started doing some fighting purrs and got loud. Sat for about 10 minutes and then I saw a strutter slowly coming my way. I could only see 5 inches of his fan zig zagging my way.
He was with a hen and I was hoping she was curious. Turned out to be 3 hens and a big fan . About 10 minutes fly by and they are at 50 coming right to me.
They walk through my opening with the strutter in tow. I Give a couple clucks and the tom pops his head up at about 25yards and I put the bead under his head and squeezed the trigger. Birdie down!!
Heavy bird weighed over 25 lbs
Had 11 and change beard and 1.25" spurs. I'm a Happy camper.
My buddies birds never showed up until 11:45 and he was already out of his camo ready to go...
When picking up the bird I thought he had some weight to him. Hung him in the scale 25.77 pounds had to weighit him 3 times
(http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k307/psefirestormlite/DCFA55A9-B726-4ECF-B0B9-2C7CDB75E6CF_zpso1eh6kgm.jpg) (http://s91.photobucket.com/user/psefirestormlite/media/DCFA55A9-B726-4ECF-B0B9-2C7CDB75E6CF_zpso1eh6kgm.jpg.html)
Dang that's a heavy bird !
Good going CH, you've killed some nice ones.
Gods of Thunder
Trophy hunting now
Great bird Paul!
What a Toad!
Great bird. Congrats
awesome bird!