It pays to have good friends

[barry]

Especially ones that don't turkey hunt!
I haven't been on here much this spring as it's been somewhat of a struggle for me to get on birds. Thanks to a good friend I was able to fill another tag before our season ended.
My buddy Jerry called me a couple weeks ago to tell me he was seeing 6-7 nice gobblers in the field behind his house. I told him it would be a few days before I could get a chance to try them. 2 days before my hunt his wife sends me a pic of 4 strutters...in their backyard!
Finally, with high hopes, my hunting partner Troy and I get set up well before daylight in the field behind my buddy's house. With that many birds in the area we were expecting the creek bottom to be rocking at daylight. Wrong! I look at my watch, it's 6:20 and still no gobbles heard. A hen starts cutting and finally that wonderful sound! I make a call and 2 birds gobble back, they're in the woods beside my buddy's house. In the meantime a deer walks by our burlap blind and spies us, she doesn't snort but she knows we're there and after a game of peek-a-boo she eventually moves on.
Thinking the turkeys may come the same route as the deer we need to make some adjustments to the blind BUT having not heard the birds for a while we're fearful of moving too much and getting busted. What to do?...Well, we call my buddy and ask him to look out his window and tell us where the turkeys are.  He tells us they are right by his woodpile at the edge of the woods which is all I need to know. Knowing we are safe to move my hunting partner makes the necessary adjustments to our blind and the game is on. I make a few calls and get nothing but silence. I then notice the latex on my tube call needs adjusting so I hand it to Troy to fix. He is handing it back to me when I catch movement...2 gobblers marching hard toward the dekes. In no time they are in the dekes which are 25 steps away. I wait for them to separate, pick out the bird with the best beard and at 7:07 my hunt is over.
I call my buddy again to tell him I got a bird and he says "I know, me and my wife watched the whole show from our bedroom window."

Here's the backyard photo 2 days prior to my hunt. In the middle left of the photo you can see a Sycamore tree, my setup was about 20 yards to the left of that. The birds came from the right up thru that bottom field just on the lower side of the grown up gully.



Me and Troy back at home with the bird. That tail fan spreader works well!

[troutfisher13111]

Congrats! That is some gorgeous scenery

[BowBendr]

Way to go Barry. Beautiful country you're hunting in !

[owlhoot]

Yep , great job. What a backyard!

[tomstopper]

Awesome. Congrats Barry.....

[ncturkey]

WTG Barry. Tell me more about your fan spreader?

[ncturkey]

I found your tail fan spreader link. It is cool.

[WV TURKEY THUG]

congrats

[thenatural67]

Way Cool and I bought three of the spreaders and trhey do work great.

Congrats

[guesswho]

Good job Barry, That is pretty looking place. 

[ccleroy]

Great job Barry

[Rokhal07]

Nice job!

[WiLL B]

Congrats Barry!!

[Snoodsniper]

Very cool. What's the chance that your friends would rent me a room for turkey season?

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

[Marc]

Great write-up, and a pretty place to hunt...  Thank you for sharing.