I didn't intend to do the TFC style end of the year summary, but I haven't had time to post much. I shot the first bird this year on March 23rd. Birds weren't where I expected, so I had to cover a lot of ground to get to them. When I got there, 5 were on the other side of an uncrossable swamp. I heard a few gobbles on my side of the swamp, so I called once and waited. 20 minutes later, he came poking through the woods.
I hit another property two weeks ago, and I heard a domino effect of gobbles 3/4 of a mile across a huge field. I made my way around it and played cat and mouse with 6 gobblers for an hour and a half before they worked into range. I shot the strutter before I got to shaking too much.
I got the invite to hunt a friend's land last week. He hadn't killed a turkey in 9 years and wasn't sure if there were birds on his land still. We went out on Saturday and found one right where he was supposed to be. On the second setup, he gobbled at 25 yards and popped up looking, and my friend cut him a backflip.
We hunted another property Sunday, and there was nothing going on close. There was a 300 acre clearcut across the paved road/property boundary, and there were a few faint gobbles coming from the creek bottom 800 yards away. I called as loud as I could and heard a gobble halfway to us 20 minutes later. It ended up being two gobblers and a hen that went back and forth around 100 yards from the road. I tried calling sparingly, but the birds moved off. I started calling more and mimicking the hen, and after 45 minutes of constant calling without a break longer than 30 seconds, one gobbled close, appeared at the edge of the road, ran across, missed getting run over by a few feet by a truck going 60, and made it into the woods on our side. I shot him (and a tree) at 20 yards. He was the biggest of the season with a 1 1/4" spur, a 1 5/16" spur, 11" beard, and 9" beard. Ended last season with a double beard, too.
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