I took my friend out for his Texas Eastern this morning. He missed last Monday so the pressure was on him!
We set up very near where he missed and I got my bird this year. Now Randy is handicapped and his mobility is pretty limited, a couple of hundred yards or so on good ground. We set up and when day broke the toms gobbled and we only had two in earshot, both about 400 yards away.
Since moving wasn't a good option, I began to call. The birds seemed fairly interested early on and when the both gobbled together out of the logging road down from where sat up, I though it was probably on. But they were still 150 yards or so away.
Then the boss hen came in. She came out of the woods clucking and yelping. She was not happy to have another hen around and she let it be known with some very aggressive purring and clucking. I had moved across the logging road from Randy and she b=lined for me. She got about 8-9 yards from me, just looking around and yelping...a lot. That was it. The two toms came hustling in and headed right for her, and me. Randy being on the other side, had plenty of time to get the strutting show and they gobbled right in front of his gun. When they separated, he took the main strutter at 30 yards. 7:15am and done! His first bird with a 20 gauge and danged if it wasn't sporting two beards! One about 10" and one about 6". We didn't have a tape to measure. I'll be adding pics when I can get 'em off my phone.
What a fantastic hunt!
