After hearing 10-15 gobbling all over the woods surrounding the property I have permission to hunt, the sun rose and all went quiet, as toms quickly hooked up with hens. I decided to walk up a big "holler" with a small creek to look for mushrooms and wait for a bird to free up. Found the morels, and at 0800, I had a bird gobbling on a ridge top fairly close to our land. I climbed 100 yards up the steep ass hill, put my decoys out, and committed to outsmarting this gobbling fool. While he would occasionally answer my mouth call...the spring allure copper pot call had him in a lather. For over an hour, he worked back and forth and up and down a hillside, but he didn't want to come through the tangle of briars between us. I finally yelped and jake gobbled and shut up...and so did he. After 15 minutes, he gobbled and I just purred a couple of times softly with the copper. Several minutes later, I caught his white head emerging from a tangle of briars only 15 yards away. He must have seen me raise my gun when he went behind a stump, because I waited about 30 seconds for him to emerge before I realized he had put the stump between us and must be leaving. I leaned forward just in time to catch his head bobbing as he was about to go back into the briars at 45 yards. TSS rolled him. I can not say enough about the Spring Allure copper...it rings and I cant find a sour note in the thing. 'Small hooks say 2 y/o bird, but he has a hell of a double beard or a really weird broken base, split beard that won't stay together. Bases look like they are both surrounded by the skin/fat sheath, but they are nearly touching...which I've never seen on a double bearded bird. Regardless...I had to work the shit out of this one, and I'm proud that I found the patience to actually stay on my ass till he came to me.
LOTS of copper!
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