No. 2 this wild morning

[FullChoke]

I was able to finally get permission to hunt a particular piece of property not far from my house this morning that I have wanted to get in on for years. It did not disappoint in any way. I eased down to the edge of a block of planted pine that borders a creek bottom and waited until the first bird gobbled directly north of me. I slipped down to the creek bottom through the pines and started to hear birds gobbling everywhere. At one point I had birds that had gobbled in all 4 compass points around me, but only had 1 that came within sight at about 60 yards. I finally had 2 birds gobbling about 100 yards in a creek bottom in front of me, that wanted to play coy instead of making out with me under the bleachers. I decided to wait them out. After about 15 minutes of the silent treatment, I catch movement to my right. Here came 3 longbeards slipping in silently trying to be that randy hen's back-door man. I eased the barrel to the right, the 3rd bird caught the movement and started to get vocal with his concerns, so I dropped the red dot on the lead interloper and reduced him to simple possession. The TSS did it's job and as the Chinese worker at the tungsten foundry in Szechuan province would say, "S? hu? j?!" (translation: Dead turkey!)

Stats, cause turkey hunters love stats. He was sporting a 15/16" right spur and a 7/8" chipped left spur, wore a 10-3/8" black tie to the potential affair and clocked in at 16.54 pounds in his underwear, so to speak. His Old Gobbler score - 55.415. A beautiful bird, but not an ungrade to the score.



I believe that one of the two birds in the creek bottom in front of me today is the Big Mamou, a 4 year old tyrant that has been seen on game cameras that all these 3 year old birds would love to line up and cheer as they watched him be carried from the creek bottom feet skyward over my shoulder. Maybe tomorrow? Stay tuned sports fans.

[Hooter]

Congrats Norman on another nice Gobbler, and good luck tomorrow!!

[FullChoke]

As a follow-up to yesterday, I went back into the same creek bottom this morning. The same bird to the north stated with the first gobble just like yesterday and then the opera started. Altogether I heard 6 other birds that ran off a total of around 400 gobbles. I have never heard such a display before in all of my years of hunting. For one 30-40 minute period, there was a continuous wall of sound from these birds. They were all gobbling from their respective trees. I had them from within 100 yards to barely in hearing range (well, my hearing, anyway). I waited to call until some were on the ground and once they had flown down, they went silent! I was able to squeeze a courtesy or two out of one later in the morning, but he was just being nice and had no intention of coming to dance. A singularly fun morning, even without a casualty.

[surehuntsalot]

congrats on your 2nd bird Norman