Could be around late 1980's ....we (father, uncle, and me) hunting Oak hammocks....a long chain of them situated parallel to a river/marsh in central Florida ....very remote area, and at the time not many folks were into turkey hunting , like they are these days
The flocks of turkeys (pure osceola) would spend the entire day as soon as the pitched out the tree until the roosted in the marsh feeding in the sloughs in the shade of low myrtle trees , it was a adjustment from the back against the tree mentally, to trying to outsmart them with zero cover
Trying to figure out where to set up in the morning was on pure luck cause they would race in at about dark ...fly up at any one of the dozens of hammocks and then pitch out in the morning....never to be seen again
Anyways one afternoon a gobbler made the fatal mistake of gobbling at roost time , this was rare because the birds in ther parts are super tight lipped in the morning , even more so in the afternoon...my father situatuated himself for a prime view 150 yards out in a field hidden under a myrtle bush (unconventional) .Well the sun came up....20 hens , and 4 huge very old 4,5,6 year old gobblers proceeded to put on the show ...we are talking gobblers with inch and 5/8+ spurs ...beards that were so long and old they took on a set shape , like a perm on a ladies hair doo... my father liked to hunt with a Rodher Latham call ...and was good with them ...he hit them with a few Jake kee kees and they swayed his way ...he took the nicest one ...but there were several others that were so big ,old and mature they resembled some kind of miniature dragon....you rarely see birds that old on public property these days if EVER....the one he killed was 1.75 on the spurs....absolutely incredible....he got that old by living a quiet life on the open marsh and not frequenting wooded areas where the hunters were all at , or it could be said all the gobblers that were in the wooded areas died young, and the birds in the unpopular areas , grew to a ripe old age
I heard about the other birds that were let go that morning ...one in particular was a equal to the one my father had killed ...that bird had a long "s -curl" to his beard...we called that one s-curl ...I hunted that gobbler for 4 more years...I NEVER GOT HIM, nobody did....several times I set up on him so close he could have been popped off , off the roost ...but that's not Turkey hunting ,it was like guessing game trying to figure out where.they would be the next morning , his beard looked like a third leg when he was on a live oak limb ....he was magnificent...never got em...I learned so much about Turkey hunting from hunting a 6 year old gobbler for all those years EXCLUSIVELY when I was in that area sure there were other birds in that area...but I only wanted to hunt "s-curl" ...over the years I've hunted many , many turkeys like s-curl ...I do it cause its HARD to do it ..it makes you appreciate the game , and value it
he died I assume from what I would guess old and natural death , I respected that gobbler ....he lived in a inhospitable condition where there were all kinds of predators, a place where if you dropped of a city boy he wouldn't last 2 days before the vultures would be picking on him ...how a wild Turkey manages to survive is s credit to the species
Cant kill em all
Shannon
