Sunday morning I went back to the same place that I had missed that gobbler off of the roost yesterday morning. Right on cue at 6:00 am he got cranked up in the same place. I took out for him through the planted pines and eased up to within 70 yards of the slough he was roosted over. He gobbled a few more times once I was set up, then he went silent. I never heard him fly down either to my side or the other. I had hens calling around me, but no gobbler. He wound up gobbling about 40 times before being struck mute. While waiting on him, another gobbler started up about 300 yards farther to the north. He gobbled about 12 times. He may be located on adjacent property, but I will keep him in mind for a future investigative hunt.
I got to pondering as to why an adult gobbler on public land would be so quick to return to his normal routines after being shot at the previous morning. I believe there were 2 factors in this. The first is because he was not touched by any of the pellets from my shot. This would have freaked him out completely and sent him flying if any of the pellets had hit him, but not lethally. The other factor was that we had had a MONSTER thunderstorm come through just a few hours prior to sunrise and he had just endured a ton of very close and very loud thunderclaps. My 20 gauge thunderclap was anemic in comparison to those and he just wrote it off as the last holdout of the storm.
Wild weekend fo sho!
