Rained yesterday and last night, a little breezy and a little drizzly this morning. So I'm gonna try getting under a roosted bird again. The woods they're in is right by a field, and I had a feeling they'd pitch out straight into the field, potentially sailing out a good bit as I've seen them do before. So I took my dsd decoys in as a back up plan, set them up on the field edge so they'd be there if I needed to move in the woods and get in position to shoot a bird over them should a bird get in the field before I could kill him.
So I move away from the decoys a bit, then slip into the woods.. walk in real quiet and sit down in the dark. As its getting light, I catch movement to my left.. close. It's a tail fan, going up and down. I can't see the bird because of a 8" tree blocking his body from my sight, but he's only 12 or so yards away from me. He's only 6' off the ground too on a tree growing out horizontally. WOW, I like getting close, but that's too close. My heart immediately starts racing and I'm thinking there's no chance I pull this off. He's facing to the left, so I'm thinking when he flies down if he pitches right out I'm going to have to turn 90* to get on him, that's a big move at that range.
Another bird gobbles about 40 yards away, roosted much higher, and eventually I make him out in the tree along with a hen. When the close bird gobbles the first time, it immediately feels like I was just pushed into artic waters in the winter. I'm desperately trying to control my shaking and hyperventilating before the gig is up. He soon starts spitting and drumming on the limb, and even yelps once. It was very light at this point and the birds start getting ansy, could tell flydown was coming. The hen I could see starts making some ruckus and switches limbs, her tail starts bobbing and she pitches out with a cackle, sailing out into the field. Not a good trend to start for where I am currently. The gobbler right next to me hops up onto another limb and now he's staring straight at me 15 yards away, but he's facing to where he'll fly out where I want him too. The other gobbler pitches straight down in the woods, towards me, and I can see his tail fan and white head moving towards me in the woods.. probably about 30 yards at this point but it's thick and I don't have a real clear shot, plus if I twitch to bear down on my gun, the close bird would bust out for sure.
All of a sudden he putts, (initially I thought this was an alarm putt but in hindsight I think it was his "flydown cackle" as I really don't think he saw me) the other bird gobbles and he jumps up off the limb and is flying out to the field, flying across me left to right. I never even thought about what happened next but I let my waterfowler instinct take over, shouldered my gun, swung through the bird and pulled the trigger. He folds up and crashes down 11 yards from me, stone dead. Now, this may not be the most orthadox method to killing a turkey, but it was an incredible feeling and one I won't be forgetting anytime soon. I would never shoot a bird off the roost, but once his feet leave the tree it's fair game IMO even though I never thought I would intentially shoot a bird flying like that. I just knew I could make that shot and did. My pattern put a nice hole in the bird, just behind the beard, completely severing his spine but didn't damage any breast meat, just his craw.
18lbs 8oz
9 1/2" beard
1 1/16" spurs
Ouch!
This was the tree he was roosted on. Never seen em roost so low to the ground, would have been interesting if I got any closer than I did to him in the dark! Yikes.
