Good Friday Handlebar Hanger (long read)
Finally able to connect on bird #2 this morning. Things were slow at first due to pouring rain until 9am. Once the rain stopped I jumped on the bicycle and pedaled a few hundred yards and stopped to call. At the sound of the call the woods beside me erupted with gobbles. I sat down and clicked the safety off thinking it was game over. I was dead wrong. The cat and mouse began and after about 20 mins I could hear a hen in the group clucking but she would never get real excited. I tried with everything I could throw at them to call her in with hopes she’d drag the group with her. No dice. They seemed to have been chained to a tree in there. After almost two hours of this a turkey ran across the logging road with it’s head down on a mission. It caught me off guard so I wasn’t positive what it was. I had figured they must have started fighting and run a Jake or 2yr old out of the bunch. After 5-10 mins of silence after the bird crossed I decided to call again. This time the group lit up as well as a bird on the other side letting me now the one that crossed was indeed a gobbler. After a couple more calls on the glass and a few more gobbles from the group and the lone gobbler I noticed the Lone Ranger was coming back. Within a couple minutes I saw a bird run out in the same spot coming back across. This time I hit him with a few hard cuts and when he stopped to look I squeezed the trigger. I jumped up to collect my subordinate bird that had been kicked from the group only to find out, to my surprise, it was actually the boss that tried to sneak away to the lonesome hen he had heard over the previous couple hours. Excited would be an understatement. I worked six days on a bird to fill my first tag thinking that had been my most rewarding bird in some time. I think this one today takes the cake for sure. Thanks for reading fellas!
20.5lbs, 11” beard and 1 1/2” shanks
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