So the Lord sent me an opening day bird in Alabama on saturday!!
The day before the season started I broke day light on one of our leases. I heard 3 on the mountain, that were pretty low. One bird hit the ground and headed south off the property, the other two headed north onto the neighboring farm, which we can hunt also.
The next morning dad and I drove the golf cart about mid ways up the mountain. When birds started singing a bird gobbled on the far north end of the property, a LONG was and he was still about us...
We decided to hold off and see if something gobbled closer. Well that did not happen. We tried getting one to gobble, but we never did. Finally we decided about 7:30 to head over to where we had heard the bird on the north end.
By the time we got there it was already 8:20. (((The previous year I let a bird get away in this EXACT spot...))) We sat down on the edge of a food plot and called a little bit. The bird gobbled once about 15 minutes after we had finished calling. Dad did not hear him, so I decided that we needed to pick up and head towards bird... The woods are very open, you can usually see 200 plus yards, so we took our time and made sure not too spook him.
We got down there close to where they like to hang out and we decided to sit down. I started yelping on a friction call, and dad on the Samson mouth call that I make. Right off the bat the bird answered us. I moved up about 40 or so yards. The bird gobbled probably 6 more times, and I could hear him drumming. It was only a few minutes and I could see the bird on the bench about us. I knew he wasn't going to come down the bench without seeing a hen... So when he stepped up onto a rock I let the nitrous eat.
He went down and I started running!!! Got up there and put my Foot on DA HEAD!!! Man it was an awesome hunt, from the time he first gobbled to us it wasn't 15 minutes before he was dead!! The Lord truly was looking down and providing for us opening day!