Filled my tag 5:00 pm last Wednesday. Typical 2 year old MI public land bird. 20 lbs, 8" beard, 3/4" and 15/16" spurs. I hunted for 12 hours on Monday (my opener). Probably 5 or 6 different setups with brief periods of running and gunnin in between. Finally struck a gobble on my last setup of the day. He was on the next ridgetop over so I got my DSD hen and jake combo set up on my ridgetop and commenced to trying to sweet talk him down thru the valley between us and up onto my ridgetop. An hour later, after we were both exhausted from our nonstop sex talk I finally decided that there must be something between us that was hanging him up. I mean he was fired up, gobbling like crazy every time I called, and I could tell that he was occassionally dropping down into the valley only to do an about face and head back up onto his ridgetop. When I snuck up to the edge of my ridgetop and looked down into the valley I discovered that it was full of water 30 yards wide and 150 yards in each direction. I quickly realized where I was at (I had approached the area from a completely different direction than usual so I didn't have my bearings straight) so I grabbed the dekes and did a big loop around the one end and started working my way up his ridgetop but I never heard from him again. On my way out I passed a little opening where I killed birds in 2014 and 2016 that was only about 300 yards from where he had been set up so I started formulating a plan in my head.
Fast forward to Wednesday. I cut out of work a couple hours early and was set up at the base of a pine tree on the edge of my little opening at 4:00. Calling every ten minutes or so using the same pot call (Enticer Silver Thunder Extreme) that I had been using on Monday. At 4:45 I finally got a response that sounded like it was coming from the same area that bird had been on Monday. Once again, he would gobble immediately every time I called. Only this time every time he gobbled I could tell he was getting a little closer. He was coming from behind me and over my left shoulder. The last time he gobbled I could tell that he was just around the corner of the brushy swale behind me. Then I saw him pop out in full strut. He saw the decoys in the opening and started strutting his way to them. I just needed him to clear a small bush and little pine tree on my left and he would be in range. He cleared the tree but was still in full strut broadside to me so it wasn't really a good shot but he still had 20 yards to go to get to the decoys so I felt pretty confident that he would present a shot. All of a sudden he came out of strut, putted once and took off running straight away from me. I shot immediately and rolled him (18 paces). When I went to recover him I looked out at my dekes and discovered that the hen had tipped back on her tail and was looking straight up in the sky. I hadn't noticed because I couldn't see her real well from my setup spot due to tall grass in the opening.
Monday's frustrating experience reinforced the importance of knowing the lay of the land as well as you possibly can. If I had realized where I was a half hour sooner I might have been able to work my around to his ridgetop while he was still fired up and interested. Wednesday's rewarding experience reinforced the importance of having patience and sticking with a plan. I'm not normally a real patient hunter and in many cases after 45 minutes in one spot with no response I would have been on the move. But I was in a spot where I have had success in prior years and it was a spot that I knew was within a few hundred yards of where there had been a real active bird just two days earlier so I went into it determined to sit there for two hours if necessary before spending the last two hours of the day running and gunning. Thankfully I didn't need to worry about that.
