I've been keeping an eye on two gobblers since the middle of February when they started strutting. This afternoon I told my dad that we were going to try and get one. He told me he wanted me to shoot but I said it was his turn and there would be no more discussion on it..lol.
We got set up and I called off and on for the next hour. I looked towards the end of the food plot about 200 yards away and saw some hens...turned out to be 11 hens and a jake. But I knew that the two longbeards ran with this bunch so I kept looking. Sure enough they were the last ones to enter the field. I told my Dad to get ready. His eyesight isn't so great anymore so I kept him informed of their movements. I got the lead hen's attention and it wasn't long before the whole group ended up in front of us at about 20 yards. My dad chose the lead bird and almost decapitated him. The bird never flopped.
Once he saw the bird wasn't going anywhere he looked at me and said, "Man this gun kicks!" He didn't realize that I had given him the 3 1/2" 12 instead of the 20 he normally carries. We walked over and admired the 2 year old bird. I then realized that it has been 10 years since we had hunted together. I retired from the Army in 2016 and since then we have been hunting by ourselves. He's 70 years old and I told him we need to hunt together more often. It was absolutely the best hunt I've been on in a long long time!
