I had a great hunt a couple of weeks ago. I went hunting with Jerry Russell of Russell Outdoor guides on the 6th. We had a quiet morning. He said that this year has been unusually quiet, and it definitely held true that day. The first spot we set up in was a crossroads to a few fields. He had seen a big old mature gobbler crossing there many mornings and felt like we had a good chance at seeing him again. We were set up with a few decoys, sitting in a blind and calling every 20 minutes. We heard nothing on the roost and nothing the next hour or so that we were in that spot.
As we got up to move, something scampered off into the woods, crashing away from us. It sounded like a small creature, so whether it was a coyote, turkey, or other small varmint, we will never know. The next spot we went to was on top of a hill that sits above several fields. We thought the turkeys may have been feeding in the fields below us. We tried calling there and waited an hour to see if anything came. Still nothing.
We then moved to a gas line, set up two decoys and sat in the woods. He started working his slate and then we heard what we were looking for, "GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!!!" We looked down the line with his binoculars and saw it. It was a mature gobbler, and we could see its beard from there. The gobbler was 300 yards down the gas line on the next hill from us. We called to answer it and it puffed up again to strut and began to gobble. From there we gave the gobbler the silent treatment and waited for him to come to us. He was slowly feeding his way down into the valley toward us. An hour passed and he was still 200 yards out. When he was around 150 he had to cross a creek. He disappeared and we didn't know whether he made it across or not.
We waited and waited and finally around 30 minutes later, he reappeared! Jerry looked and could see that he might be a 2 year old bird, and not wanting to take any chances wanted us to get away from the quarter strut jake decoy he had out. We snuck down the tree line right inside the woods until we were far enough away from the decoy that it wouldn't spook the turkey. Jerry called again to remind him that we were up the hill. I couldn't see him at this point and was just listening to Jerry whisper the distances to me. 125 yards...100 yards...75 yards...I could feel my heart pounding out of my chest! When he said 60, I thought I was about to have a heart attack. I lifted up my gun and waited for him to close the range. As the tom got in range and stepped into a hole in the brush I could shoot through, I squeezed the trigger and my CVA Apex finished the job. It put the hammer down on him! I was shooting the Winchester Longbeard XR's and man they hit hard.
We both ran over to the bird, high fiving on the way. The tom had first gobbled at 10 A.M. and he was dead at 12:33. We waited a total of 2.5 hours on the bird and it felt good. Here's some pictures of the turkey. He had a beard with most of the hairs at 10.5" and a few strands at 11". The spurs were around 1" I was on cloud nine after this one.
