I've always wanted to tag-out, but I never thought of the repercussions of having to sit out the last half of turkey season
Bird#1 (not pictured) came at 5pm on March 28th. I was setup in a strut zone doing some blind calling for the afternoon. He started gobbling at two owls and quickly responded to my calls thereafter. I had a Jake decoy out (that he apparently didn't like) and he came in wary. I pulled the trigger at 50 yards.
Bird #2 was harvested at flydown on April 5th. I got to the edge of a food plot shortly before first light as the rain was drizzling down. I heard a hen yelp in a tree across the plot and I immediately sat down against a pine. She flew down first and was followed by 3 other hens. As the other hens flew down, a tom gobbled only one time. He then pitched down into the plot to join them. As the flock was feeding towards me, the lead hen picked me off and started putting. It was now or never. I pulled the trigger at 50 yards, again.
Bird #3 was hard earned. A Buddy and I had paddled a mile and then hoofed an additional back into a creek bottom and heard this bird gobbling the night before as he flew up for the night. We came back in the next morning only to be greeted by rain at daylight. Due to the poor conditions, he only gobbled twice on the limb and it made it impossible to pinpoint his position. We walked towards where we thought we heard him(roughly 400 yards away) and struck him up at 8am, but he was across the creek. After making a few more calls, I went silent. Ten minutes of silence was broken with wingbeats as he was flying across the creek to us, although by the time he got to the our side, he had lost interest. I watched him walk away at 80 yards. We then decide to make a big loop around him and get to a high knob, where we initially stood at daylight. At 10:30am, I cut a few times on a pot, and he gobbled. I called again a minute later and he gobbled and it was evident that he was coming because he had cut the distance in half. I went silent again and he gobbled on his own at 60 yards but we couldn't see him at the bottom of the hill. As we could here him walking up to us, a hen started yelping to our right..... we never heard him again. After things had settled down, we decided to setup down into the bottom where he last was. Hours passed by and at 2:30 he started gobbling on his own where we had the first encounter with him that morning. I cut loud on the pot and he answered. We moved towards him as he was gobbling and evidently so did he, because we had to make a quick setup when he sounded off less than 100 yards away. He put on a show as he came in spitting and drumming. He decided to skirt at us 50 yards, but at this point, I was pretty confident with that shot.
On April 12th my season was over. From now on I will have to start hunting other states because its been AGONIZING sitting on the sidelines with this much season left. Unfortunately, as a college student, the funds weren't there for out of state hunting this year. All of my hunts were on public land and that made success that much sweeter.
