Man what a week. I left Sunday headed to Arkansas to hunt the opener. Got it done on the first sit Monday morning with a great bird I post in "The Limb" above. Still working on pics. Never could get another one on the ground, but had a lot of close experiences. Birds were gobbling good, but still had plenty of hens with them. If you've never hunted the Ozark Mountains, got dang if it ain't a beautiful hunt. Headed out Tuesday night to hunt West Tennessee with a couple of friends. Wednesday was no good, but did see/hear some birds. Thursday morning found me in a river bottom by boat of some of the best hard wood timber I've seen in a while. Nice change of pace as I grew up cutting my teeth hunting Easterns like this compared to these West Texas/Oklahoma Rios in mesquite flats. Long story short had a bird come within 15 yards of me but I never could see him for a big cypress tree. He gobbled and about blew my hat off. I knew he was close, but just could never see him. My buddy could and wouldn't shoot him thinking I'd have a shot. Bird ended up walking off and circling around us. We got him fired up double and triple gobbling. I saw him at about 40-50 yards coming in. Thought its a done deal again about the time the State of Tennessee decides to run an airboat up the river to get in a special track hoe they have on pontoons to clean the river out and start working. Never hear or saw the bird again. Struck another one at 11 o'clock, but he must had had hens with him as he walked off gobbling and one of the hens came in.
I left that afternoon headed back to Texas since my wife had Good Friday off to spend time with the family. Had a good friend from Alabama in town that wanted to hunt Saturday and Sunday. Finally got the Rio monkey off my back. We killed 5 on Saturday. All of them were 2 year olds. 9-10" bears with around 1" spurs. Crazy story. We were hunting a 300 acre wheat field around noon. Had just called in 9 jakes to 10 yards. After they left the field we decided to go get some lunch. We head out across the middle of the field and spot 3 longbeards headed at us. The field has a pretty good rise or hill we were about to walk over. We hit the deck where the birds can't see us. My buddy convinces me that we should put the decoy out, back up 30 yards, and lay sniper prone style in the field as we don't have enough time to make it to the mesquite line. I reluctantly agree. We ended up doubling at about 20 yards. How in the heck those birds didn't see two, 300 pound ex-college football offensive linemen laying in 12" high wheat I'll never know, but chalk up another crazy tactic that worked on turkeys.
About an hour before we killed those birds I had my first ever encounter with a snake turkey hunting. One more step and I'd been on top of a 4-5 foot ratter. Found out a fat boy still has moves, but man that shook me up for a while! Dudes head looked as big as my fist.