1 Shot, 2 Gobblers, 5 Beards, Part 1

idgobble · May 07, 2018, 02:47:40 PM

Driving past some property I used to be able to hunt on until it changed hands and the new owner posted it I saw two gobblers in his field. When I asked him for permission to hunt a few years ago he told me he won't allow any hunters on his property. I do have permission to hunt on adjoining property so I drove up the road and walked into some woods about 400 yards from the gobblers and started calling. Soon I had them gobbling and coming toward me. They appeared about 35 yards from me and had a third gobbler with them. The first two were big with heavy beards and they got in about 28 yards away and walked around looking for the hen they thought was there. They stayed right next to each other and never were in a position where I could shoot without hitting them both. It's legal in my state to get two in one day and I had two tags but would rather only get one and then get another some other day so I was waiting for them to be far enough apart so I'd only hit one. I had friends coming to hunt with me in a few days and I usually call in birds for them so I was starting to think I might as well see if I could get them both with one shot and then spend time scouting and locating other gobblers when they got suspicious and started walking away so I shot and got them both. One's beard was 10 3/8 inches and the other turned out to have four beards, 10 11/16, 9 ½, 8 ¼ and 7 7/8. His spurs were 15/16 inches and he probably weighed 22-23 lbs. I didn't weigh him. A week later, when I got home, I decided to score him by the NWTF system so I used 21 lbs. to be conservative. He scored 112.375. I've had a few other gobblers that scored well enough to be high up in my state's NWTF records but I've never entered them and I'm not entering this one but that score would smash the current state record of 99 and would put him at number 31 in NWTF Merriams records for all the states! ( I couldn't enter him anyway because I didn't weigh him with a witness) Seven years ago I got a gobbler with 5 beards about 300 yards away from where I got this one so I'm pretty sure they have the same genes. That one had beards of about 7,6,5, 3 and 2 inches.