Like you, I filled two of my three tags here in Southern Illinois. Illinois has five seasons and a hunter can draw up to three permits. The first season was the first week of April and I took one at 11:30 in the morning when I was awakened from a sound sleep by a couple of toms only a few feet away. The fourth season (late April) found me hunting five of the seven days only to draw a blank as the toms did not seem interested in my calling or decoys. Then, yesterday on the second day of the fifth and last season (7 days in length), I overslept and decided to hurry to a nearby wood lot, getting my Funky Chicken in the ground just as a bird gobbled across a creek about 400 yards away while another one sounded off way in the distance. At 7 a.m. I decided to head for another area when a tom gobbled a couple of hundred yards away, answering my Primos gobble tube with occasional hen yelps. I hurriedly put my camo screen back in the ground and settled back in my ground lounger. Less than a minute later, the gobbler's fan showed up to my left over the rise in the grassy picked soybean field. At 70 yards, he sized up the FC for several seconds before coming on a dead run for him, only stopping when a load of #5 shot dropped him in his tracks. Having filled the last tag of the spring season, I was done, taking over a half-hour to slowly walk back to my truck with my shotgun, decoys, ground lounger, and 20# tom as the elastic knee sleeves allowed me to hunt yet another season. I can now catch up on some sleep and gardening chores.
