Well considering how brutal the weather has been up here and of coarse it was forecast to rain all opening day we still got off to a great start. I only hunt out of a blind when my wife and daughter tag along or if lots of rain is in the forecast. My dad is getting up in age and can't handle the cold, with the forecast I decided to slip in the day before openers and set the blind up. A long muddy walk in had him huffing and puffin, we took several breaks to let him rest. Only had one gobbler going off on the roost (I know there are at least 4 in this location). He gobbles 5 times, hits the ground and heads the other way and shuts up. After several calling sequences and nothing I got a bit more aggressive. That fired him back up and he must have ran over to us. At 15 yds in some brush he is standing there parascoping so I tell dad to cut him if he has a decent shot.............BOOM........7:10am opening day and dad cut his first tag. Knowing there are more birds here and it's a steady rain we decide to stay to see if we can strike another up. 8:45am rolls around and hadn't heard a peep. We decide to get out for a pee break and I grab my box call to get some louder calls out to the other end of the bush. Sure enough at 9am I hear a gobble. Well he fired right up and here he came. He got to 60yds and held up then retreated. For the next hour he worked back and forth, coming and going. Finally at 10:15 a second gobbler sounded off and that was enough to push this guy in close enough for a shot, 10:30am and another opening day double for the old boy and I!!! I decided to leave the old boy in the blind and walked out to the truck, went home and grabbed the quad to retrieve the ol bugger and gear, he was very happy he didn't have to slug back out through that muck!
Day two we had lots of action and a couple close calls but couldn't quite seal the deal.
Day three my daughter had a PA day at school so she was able to join us for the mornings hunt. Lots of gobbles of the roost, sounded like 3-4 birds. Nice bush with lots of trails through it had us split up with dad on one trail, the daughter and I on another (no blinds). We had 2 hens come to the decoys and the one started to strut and continued beating my feeding hen for over an hour!!! What a show!! She never once broke strut in that hour. Finally I hear the gobblers fire up and then I spot them through the bush coming down the trail dad is on. Watching the leed bird in my binos I watch dad put the hammer down on him!! The rest of the birds all took off at the shot so decided to get up and go see the bird. That is finally when the strutting hen left, she didn't even flinch at the shot just kept up the beating.........lol. Day three and dad is tagged out!!! What a great start to our season!!!
My computer is down so I'll try to use the upload option on here, not sure if it will work as I used to use photobucket then switched to Flickr but can't upload from a mobile device. See what happens.
NOPE WOULDNT LET ME UPLOAD.........sorry I guess no pics
