It's been a tough season for me this year. I have not missed many days and I've been on them hard. I had a couple safety off, one more step scenarios that did not pan out.
Fast forward to today, I had near silence at daybreak except a very distant bird that only sounded off twice. I went on the move all morning and finally heard a bird gobbling good on the opposite ridge with nearly vertical hillsides, so I had to get where he was. By the time I got to him, silence.
I decided to sit around 0930 to do some calling and just see if I could strike one up. Sure enough, within 20 minutes I had two birds gobbling from a long ways off, but cutting the distance. Well all at once I see him coming at around 100 yards, right down the trail I was sitting on. He gobbled his way in breaking in and out of strut, before I finally settled the red dot on him at just around 45-50 yards. That was all she wrote.
He's a double bearded bird with some pretty good hooks on him. I for some reason cannot load pictures on here so Wildspur will post them up later.
