Got my nephew's wife a decent 3 year old Saturday morning. Had to handle two trespassers that decided to come in behind us on the farm at 0500 so I was worried we wouldn't make it back to the flat bench that bisected two creek ravines in time, but we made it in just as the sun was making the treetops visible, setting up about 80 yards from the ravine edge. I set out the dekes and got behind my nephew and his wife, Laura and gave the woods a few minutes to settle before owl hooting. At the second bar owl call the entire ravine edge BLEW UP with gobbles. They were roosted all along the ridge for 200 yards. Just before legal light I let out a few soft tree yelps and purrs on my old Primos Power Crystal pot and no fewer than 6 gobbles thundered in return. After a few minutes listening to the real birds talk and gobble and move aroumd on the limb, I let out some sharp clucks and a flydown cackle followed by an assembly call. It was answered by what seemed every gobbler in the woods. 45 seconds later they started pitching down, 5 longbeards landing 40 yards from my shooters, immediately popping into full strut and gobbling. The only problem was Laura is SHORT, like barely 5 feet tall and the bench we were on looks like a mogul ski slope, with little rises and dips and she just couldnt get a clear shot at the birds that landed in range. The last bird to fly down was a crotchety old hen that touched down. Looked dead at the decoys and started clucking and cutting. I matched her call for call, but she wanted nothing to do with the hussy intruders and started feeding off to our right, taking EIGHT longbeards and 3 jakes with her. They stopped in an opening about 85 yards away and the gobblers strutted and gobbled as she fed. They answered everything i threw at them, but just would not budge...until I added some jake yelps on the mout call into the routine. You could literally watch their mood change and suddenly one gobbler started chasing a jake around, biting and kicking him like he owed him money. I let out one last series of yelps on the pot followed by a few jake yelps and he stopped, turned and made a beeline for the decoys. He was committed, but I think nerves got the better of my nephew and when the gobbler got to about 35 yards he told her to kill him. At the shot the bird rolled, got up and flew! I KNEW he was hit hard however and i watched him fly, locking in on the point I thought i saw him go down. After we settled our nerves we got to searching, but to our dismay we just could not locate him. After looking for almost an hour, we stood in a sunny opening discussing what happened and then my nephew goes "What is that"?! In a beach blow down right at the property edge was her bird. We truly thought we lost him because she blew a sapling clean off she didn't see at about 5 yards and he only caught a partial pattern but it was enough to mortally cripple him. He managed to fly about 125 yards and crashed down into the oy spot we hadn't checked. What had almost ended in heartbreak, became a celebration of Laura's first ever spring gobbler. A solid 3 year old with a 9.5" beard, 1 1/16" sharp spurs, and weighing 18 pounds, 5 ounces.
