It was a little chilly for my NY opener with 2" covering the open fields and a clear bright moon to boot. The first gobble came at 5:25 am 100 yards or so away. I let him know I was there with some soft tree yelps using Buster's red slate matched with Jeff's (JLH) frog wood striker. Three to four more birds chimed in below me. I went quiet for 30 minutes listening to random gobbling. I then pulled out Marlin's red cedar/purpleheart "misfit" and did a fly-down cackle with wing beats. The woods really fired up then. Things got real quiet at 6:30 am so they were down with hens. I went then with soft calling with Strawser's "blue duce" soft clucks and purrs with gobblers answering at will but they weren't budging. So I pulled out Sadler's McGraws "judge and jury" mouth call and just challenged the hen's aggressively and then dropped down to purrs and clucks with a few kee's mixed in. Finally, the hens showed up dragging along 5 full-fan two-year-old toms. Chest pounding time. The 2 hens saw my DSD decoys, 1 feeding hen/breeding hen set (No jake) They came in dragging all 5 toms to 22 yards. All 5 fell in love, all fanned out. I picked the more dominant bird out, the one pushing the others around, and pulled the trigger delivering a hand-rolled Ronny Savage "Lil Hammer" no flop #8s at 7 am... I like mixing my calling up... be safe!
