Me and brother took a road trip.
We started in Wyoming and I must say............Wyoming gobblers are the most IGNORANT birds I ever tried to kill in my life !! But Saturday morning, at 5:45 I evened the score just a little. About 3 minutes after flydown, this guy popped over a roll at26 yards and ingested a Longbeard XR. Really nice spurs for a Merriam's but weighed maybe 14-15 pounds. He was an old warrior.
Exactly an hour later and a mile away, my brother brought a horse of a strutting snow-tip over a rise with his hens and laid him to rest with a 20-ish yard shot.
So, with Nebraska our next stop, we headed east and on Sunday afternoon, brother's Winchester 1300 spoke again and his first Nebraska bird was down.
Monday morning brought us back to the same area as we had heard multiple gobbling birds the previous afternoon. I stayed low and brother started for the top of the world. Shortly after flydown time, a big old boss came pushing 10 hens up an old road right toward me. But, in range, but behind the last few limbs before I could shoot, the whole wad of them cut up over the mountain like a herd of bighorn. My brother spent the rest of the morning playing cat & mouse with them but never quite winning. Meanwhile.............some more loud work from the boxcall (30-40 mph winds in the bottom) brought a nice gobbler with his two hens up the same road and I had MY first Nebraska bird.
So that afternoon we decided to hunt together in a creek bottom, set up on either side of a BIG old cottonwood tree. Brother was to handle any bird that came from his side and me mine. His side had a bird commit first and another Longbeard XR through his 1300 and...............
I had switched over to my SumToy enhanced NEF 20 gauge for the afternoon hunt. About an hour after my brother's bird kicked up dust, a bird gobbled waaaaaaaaaay up a road into the mountain. I fired up a loudmouthed boxcall and he answered. Next time he gobbled he was somewhat closer. Then he gobbled with another bird and they were MUCH closer..........like 300-400 yards back over my left shoulder. Don't know where the second bird got to. But a few minutes later, I see a bird jogging down the road to my left and a beard swinging in front of him. He stopped up short of where I was expecting him to and left the road for a climb up the mountain away from me. I scooted the red dot in his direction and when he cleared a downed limb on the hillside, I loosed a swarm of Heavyweight 7's and he went lights-out. I had my second Nebraska Merriam's.
Agreeing that neither of us really had a need to buy and fill a 3rd Nebraska tag, we packed up and left for home Tuesday morning, arriving home 3600+ miles later around 7:00 PM Wednesday night.
Yesterday morning, I headed up to one of my favorite crime scenes on our property. I hunted/dodged raindrops til shortly after 10:00 when a nice, sharp spurred bird came strutting in and at 31 yards, fell to that little 20 gauge single.
All this from Saturday to Thursday and AFTER getting to watch my daughter ice a VERY solid bird on youth day..............
If it gets ANY better than this in THIS life, I don't know how that could be..............
