Took a trip w/ my pastor to hunt a farm in Camden Co., NC on 4/13 & 4/14 and was fortunate to fill a tag. Birds were pretty vocal on the roost but man do they have a lot of hens to choose from. We called one in off the roost on Wed. AM but he would not commit to the decoy and drifted off. Things got quiet after that until my pastor killed his on Wed. afternoon, 22lbs, 10" beard and 1 1/8" spurs, funny thing is we were set up on a field edge and both of us had actually nodded off and we both woke up to 2 hens about 25 yrds. in front of us and a gobbler way off to the left that i could not see and had another one strutting out of site off to our right, we could hear his wings dragging in the leaves. My pastor could see the one to the left and told me to get my gun up but I told him I was going to have to move too much to get a shot so i told him to take it. He gets his gun up and has to lower it to adjust his red dot cause he could not see the dot, all the while the birds are walking right out in front of us, gun back up and he gets a good 25 yrd. shot, gobbler dropped like a box of rocks. We both laughed at how much movement he got away with. When he shot, the one to our right ran behind us and I swung around but too many sapplings and no clean shot. We went to another part of the farm and got into some more birds and tried to pull off a sneak attack as they were feeding away from us but never could get ahead of them. We went back in there the next morning and had 5 different gobblers around us and at 6:28A the 835 gave one the dirt nap at 12 yrds., 18.6 lbs., 10" beard and 1" spurs. We called in another after doing a fighting purr/beating my hat like wings against my leg and on the ground and had him close the gap to 50 yrds. but he turned and walked in the woods behind us no more than 20 yrds. but was way to thick for my pastor to get a shot at. All in all a good trip. Heres a pic of mine!
