Hey Y'all,
I don't really hunt turkeys for myself here in Georgia. I'm usually out guiding folks for the duration of the season and I'll hunt when I take my yearly trip to the midwest.
I have gone to other states and hunted public land and have always found the way to seal the deal. I have never hunted public land here in Georgia because I have access to private land, but I set a goal this year of killing one on public land in Georgia.
I have hunted a piece of public ground about 45 minutes from the house for dove, but never chased anything else out there. Last night I start scouting the property using some aerial photos online. I find a spot that looks promising and I made plans to go hit the spot in the morning with the girlfriend.
As we are driving to the spot we start to pass hunters like crazy. Luckily enough, when I got to my spot, no one was there.
Fast forward.........we finally get to a spot about 1/2 mile from the truck and hear a few hens calling very softly, but no gobbles. We just sit there for 20-30 minutes to give any birds time to fly down and walk around a bit before we starting moving about. We walk another 1/2 mile deeper into this huge swamp and I make a call and a bird hammers way off. We start moving towards the bird and we find a nice buck skull. As we are standing there I call again and he hammers about 100 yards away. I quickly instructed the girlfriend to sit against a tree and I move up 5 yards in front of her. I sit down and take off my vest and put my shotgun on my knee, and when I look up I see him strutting 100 yards off.
He is behind all this cane thicket and small saplings and moves in to about 20-30 yards and I cannot get a clean shot. A hen follows him and keeps walking right towards me. He looks at the hen and turns around in full strut to about 55 yards. He finally come out of strut and picks his head up and I roll him. Those Hevi #6s really rocked his world because he hardly even flopped.
It was pretty darn awesome because this property doesn't have a ton of birds and its full of lazy hunters who drive the roads and call from their trucks and spook tons of birds. It was also my girlfriends first turkey hunt and on the drive there she told me that we'd get one.
Sitting around while we let the woods really wake up.
Of course, his only real flop comes when taking a picture.
8 inch beard and 3/4 inch spurs.
The girlfriend.
