The weekend

[FullChoke]

This afternoon, I will be heading to Alabama for the weekend to hunt with a buddy of mine on his family place. It is seething with turkeys and is a fun filled trip that I look forward to every year. I hope that everyone is able to stay safe, have fun in the woods and shoot multiple multiple-bearded old gobblers.

BTW gentlemen, we are very much in this year's race and I expect that it will come right down to a close finish right at the wire.

Good luck. 

FC

[xarcher]

Good luck to you and all others. Tomorrow is PA junior hunt. Taking a friends son to one of my honey holes. He's a fidgety sort but is 14 or 15 so needs to learn not to use a ground blind. Be safe all

[Hooter]

This afternoon, I will be heading to Alabama for the weekend to hunt with a buddy of mine on his family place. It is seething with turkeys and is a fun filled trip that I look forward to every year. I hope that everyone is able to stay safe, have fun in the woods and shoot multiple multiple-bearded old gobblers.

BTW gentlemen, we are very much in this year's race and I expect that it will come right down to a close finish right at the wire.

Good luck. 

FC

Yep Norman, We ain't doing too bad. We just need 3 more birds, and we should be somewhere near the top.  Come on guy's, lets hammer down!
May have a decent upgrade to help out a little.

[FullChoke]

My trip to Alabama was a great time, but I have a confession to make. I missed again. Saturday am we got one bird stirred up on the old homestead, but he had other places to go and wouldn't come play. That afternoon I went to one of their other properties and just sat and sweated. The next morning, my buddy and I went to that same area and waited on the ridge road to hear one crank up. We were there well after light and had heard nothing but the swarms of gnats that descended on us. We decided to head back in and go fishing and half way back to the buggy, one hammers on the ridge we had just come from. We got as close as we could without being seen and set up. He gobbled back at me several times, but flew down and sounded like he was leaving out the back door. We hopped up and took off down the road towards him. We had gone about 100 yards when he hammers just out of sight around the curve in the road. We set up across the road from each other and got ready. He would gobble good at my yelping, but just wasn't doing much advancing on our positions. I decided that since he knew where the hen was, I was going to shift into critical coy mode and just scratch in the leaves and lightly cluck to him. This still elicited gobbles from him, but no movement in our direction. After playing hard to get for almost 2 hours with him just out of sight and my butt going totally numb, I hear a hen who's yelps sounded like she was a heavy cigarello smoker. The gobbler was not entirely impressed with this old bag, especially when there was a fresh, flirty young chick just right over there. Now I started to hear his gobbles getting closer. Suddenly, and for just 2 seconds, he appears at 30  yards from me, steps over to the edge of the road and drops down the hill off of the side. He was huge! He is now in the woods just in from of my buddy. He slips down through this heavy thicket, stops just downhill from him and gobbles. I knew that if he would come to me just a little, my buddy could lower the boom on him. He watched that grandma hen ease up to the gobbler, give him a low cluck and the gobbler spins and takes off with him and out of our lives they marched. My buddy tells me that he estimated that the beard on this titan easily exceeded 12" and can only dream what his leg gear looked like. I asked him why that Mossberg had not roared and he said that in all of that vegetation, he simply did not have a clear killing shot and did not want to chance wounding such a magnificent bird..

As we stood there talking about it, 2 other birds gobble just around the same corner. We moved about 30 yards down the road, set up and got ready. A line of thunderstorms were moving in and these two birds would shock gobble off of every thunderclap. I finally spotted them down the road and called them into range. When the leader was about 35 yards out, I pulled down on him and shot. When I jumped up there was no flopping bird. We checked everywhere for evidence of impact, and could not even find a feather. The lightning was now directly above us and we had to bug out. I took a brief moment to share my heartfelt feelings in what quickly degraded into an entirely unprintable diatribe.

Between now and next season, I will have an answer to this revolting set of misses and a complete solution to this lunacy. I still take great solace in knowing that I flat whipped that old gobbler's butt, just without a resultant fatality and the associated upgrade on our scoreboard.

[Hooter]

Great story Norman!!!  Kind of sounds like the stuff we went through this past weekend!   

[surehuntsalot]

Hate to hear that Norman,but at least you got to see your bird.
I worked 1 this past friday morning and 1 again saturday morning,both mornings the birds gobbled like there was no tomorrow,they came so far and drew the line in the sand,as they have all season.