Pygmy

I killed another 2 year old this morning..He may have been a brood mate of the first one I shot.. Same weight, 19 1/2 pounds...3/4" spurs..The beard had suffered beard rot and was cut of at about 3", but was heavy...Looked like a shaving brush. He came in with 2 hens, and surprisingly, when I riddled his noggin at 20 yards, the hens did not flush.. They just stood there putting nervously for a couple of minutes and then settled down and actually started feeding.. The tom fell on his beak and did not as much as quiver for 3-4 minutes, and then he gave a few wing flops..When he did this both hens rushed over to him. The larger hen actually STRUTTED, wings down and tail fannned in a circle around his body..She came to full strut 4 times...The other hen just stood around yelping softly and looking concerned, if a turkey can look concerned.. I watched them for about fifteen minutes and they eventually began preening and feeding right around their boyfriend's carcass..I Finally waved them off... I have heard of hens strutting before, but this is the first time in my 40+ years of turkey hunting that I have ever witnessed it.

What Wooley said...

Congrats to you and your Dad, Joe !! Fine bird !! Good, solid 3 year old with those spurs.. Looks like he was suffering from beard rot...In another couple months he'd lose a few inches of beard in that discolored area.

Next time I'm out in the garage I'll dig my turkey tapes out of my old gun cabinet and see what I've got..I know I had two of Kirby's instructional tapes at one time..No telling if I still have both of them or not..One may have been a bootleg that one of my hunting buddies gave me.

That's what I experienced in Georgia, Lee... Most of the shooting I heard was at just about roost time..Of course, I was hunting in the area where "Deliverance" was filmed... In Ontario it's not so bad..they end shooting hours at 7:00 PM to help discourage the roost shooters.. I think it is a good thing, too, because suitable roost areas are much more limited and predictable up there, at least in the area I hunt.

Yeah, Paulie !! Dr. Paul Pelham was the guy ! He was an awesome caller ( he had to be to beat out Dick Kirby) and a real nice guy to talk to also...He passed away quite a few years back. I used Quaker Boy mouth calls for a number of years, my favorite being the Old Boss Hen....The name always reminded me of one of my old girlfriends...<<GRIN>>... Have you heard anything from any of the old gang ? I get an email once in awhile from Mike Davis and Ray Goff...I see Slater and The Big Galloot now and then..That's about it.. Oh yeah...Gator and I still exchange hunts every year....

Yeah...By noon, I am ready for a sandwich, a couple of beers and a nap... I have hunted 4 states that allow all day hunting...I have heard gobblers in the afternoon, but have never been able to do much with them..The only one I killed, I was sitting, watching a field, much like deer hunting..Two gobbelrs came out 2 feed and made the mistake of coming within shotgun range of me.

Congrats to you and your lovely daughter ..!!.... Nice bird...Her smile tells it all.....

Gobbler harvest has little to do with total population... Hence, why limit hunters to one gobbler per season? If you want to increase population, curtail hen harvest in the fall. Whatever you do, Mother nature is really the boss..A good nesting season means LOTS of turkeys for a couple of years.A cold, wet nesting season means less birds next year.

Yes I did...The first time I saw Dick was at the NSNWTF Convention and Calling Contest in Portville in '75 or '76... He placed high in the contest, but not win...For the life of me I can't remember the name of the old boy that did win it, but he was president of the NYSNWTF at the time. He was a veterinarian, and took the xrays that were used for printable turkey head targets for years...He's been dead for years now. I had the pleasure of visiting with Dick at several seminars, plus a couple of NWTF national conventions in Columbus, Ohio and Nashville, TN.....

The Quacker Boy Grand Slam was my first turkey vest also...I finally gave it up (after many repairs) when the fabric BEHIND the shell loops wore through and the shells would fall out...I replaced it 12 years ago with Bucklick Creek vest, which I don't like NEARLY as well as my old Grand Slam...<<sigh>>... I have the cassette tape with the Letchworth hunt on it...really cool to learn that the guy who pulled the trigger was one of your buddies.. Small world.

IIRC, both NY and PA opened their first spring seasons in the late 1960s.. Pa had a fall season for years, and NY had a short fall season for several years before spring seasons were opened.My very first TURKEY was a hen I shot in the fall of 1965...Got my name in the local paper for that. Never killed another bird until the gobbler in 1975. There was little published info about turkey hunting at that time. Only a few sports writers wrote about it..Dave Harbour and Charles Elliot were a couple I remember. I learned to call from a 45rpm record featuring M. L. Lynch himself. I still have the record but I don't have a turntable to play it on. There were only a few call manufacturers. My first call was a Lynch World Champion box made in Birmingham, Alabama...It took me a few years to get the hang of moth calls..The call I learned on was the first commercially offered twin diaphragm, the Perfection Super Double D... Camo was pretty rudimentary, mostly WWII. The first " designer" camo I remember was Trebark. Facemasks and gloves were used, even back then. Camo finishes on guns were unheard of. Those of us who camo'd their guns used camo tape.

defrazzle...So the little woman is gone to Florida, eh ? Lucky devil.. A friend of mine told me the other day that he had just made a pleasure trip.. He took his wife and her mother to the airport.....

Mr. Butterball , being the head honcho gobbler in your fields, sound like a good candidate for a full strut gobbler decoy.. Good luck, Wildcat !

My 40th anniversary of killing my first gobbler is coming up next week. I was glancing over my "memory shelf" just tonite and spotted a turkey wishbone. The date written on it in pencil reads " May 15 1975".. It's from my first spring gobbler.. I hunted them 1n 1973 and 1974, but never killed one until 1975.. I was 25 years old..A mere wisp of a lad..I have killed at least one gobbler per year in NY except for 2 or perhaps 3 years.. I have been fortunate to have taken some other birds over the years in PA,Virginia, Kentucky and Ontario.. I've always been somewhat of a duffer at turkey hunting, although I have persued it passionately.. I have never been very good at it, but I have worn them down with persistence..

I am not real comfortable with the scope on my turkey gun.. I have shot many birds with the bead sights, but missed s few by raising my head off the stock, so I went to a front/rear adjustable fiber optic sight...Killed a bunch of birds with that, but then due to my old eyes, the sights began to blur, so I went to a holosight. Killed a few birds with that and missed a couple. Never really liked the damn thing.It broke about a month after the warrenty ran out. I had always been shy of a scope on a magnum shotgun for turkeys because with the creative positions you sometimes need to shoot from, I figured that sooner or later I would be bleeding worse than the turkey. Last year I finally bit the bullet and put a Leupy 1x4x20 on the 11-87.. I went 2 for 2 last year, but both bird were shot in open fields from the blind. This year I am 1 for 3...Both birds I missed were in the woods..I am NOT comfortable with the scope in the woods, despite the fact that I have killed deer for years with scope sighted shotguns and rifles in the woods...It just ain't the SAME, schooching down against a tree, trying to be as motionless as possible, and trying to execute a good shot on a sharp eyed turkey coming through the peckerpoles... I'm going back to my bead sighted 1100 while hunting the woods. If I hunt a field from a blind, I'll still take the scope sighted 11-87..

Nice bird, Larry...CONGRATS !! I'd be tagged out too if I could hit anything.. The gills are bedding now in Sis's pond, so they shouldn't be far behind in Honeoye. By the time I get back from Ontario, it should be PRIME..I can just taste those succulent filets as I speak.

Congrats on your gobbler, VJP ! He's a 2 year old, with 3/4" spurs a a 9 inch beard.. Weight is not a great indicator of age. I have personally weighed 2 year old spring gobblers as light as 12 pounds and as heavy as 23 pounds. I have also weighed jakes as heavy as 19 pounds.

According to a friend of mine who lives only bout a mile from the "rattlesnake refuge" near Cameron Mills, the DEC had been doing some controlled burns to IMPROVE the rattlesnake habitat. There were several grass/brush fires up the Canisteo Valley that day, and I'm not really sure who started the one on the state land in question. The only species of rattler present there is our native timber rattlers, and the DEC is very protective of that parcel, since timber rattlers are a threatened species, and according to a local herpetologist ( now deceased) that parcel of state land, formerly the Richmeyer farm, has the highest density of timber rattlers in the state. When a snake has to be relocated because it is in a highly populated area or whatever, the old Richmeyer property is where the snakes are released. The DEC has several snakes in that area that are fitted with radio transmitters and technicians periodically go in to locate the snakes and check them for whatever it is that snakes are checked for.

Great pictures, my friend... Now get your damn SHORTS on and go out and kill a GOBBLER !...<<grin>>...

I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and learn to post pictures online.. Some action for Gator, but no dead turkey yet..Cancelled our Maine trip..we'll be hunting here again tomorrow.

Yeah..I wish I had it on film...

I was set up this morning on an inside corner of the woods where I heard a gobbler yesterday morning. I had my pretty boy full strut decoy out in the remains of last year's buckwheat field, along with a couple of feeder hen dekes. No roost gobbling, which did not surprise me because the birds have been pretty tight lipped here so far this year. When it got light enough so that I thought birds would be on the ground, I did a little light clucking and yelping. No response, but a few minutes later I heard some very soft clucking, and a dainty little hen came out into the field. She was a very petite and graceful little lady.. Reminded me of one of my old girlfriends.. She eyed my decoy spread and went pecking her way up across the food plot.. I waited until she was out of sight and gave a soft string of yelps on my box call.. A gobbler answered about 100 yards down in the woods....I yelped softly again and he gobbled right back..I was in business.. He gobbled again and I knew he was coming...I let him gobble and only gave a couple clucks and a soft yelp to let him know I was still there.. He gobbled just inside the wood line and I got a glimpse of a white head... Next thing I knew he was standing just outside the woods in full strut eyeballing my decoy spread.. He started advancing toward my gobbler decoy, still in full strut...The closer he got to the decoy, the faster he ran...I couldn't shoot him because he as running too fast !! He hit my decoy broadside at an impact velocity of about 30 MPH...The decoy went rolling and the stake broke right in half !! He swirled around and looked down at the upside down decoy, as if to admire his handwork, and I ended the show with a load of copper plated #6 shot... The way he acted I would have expected he was a dominant gobbler...Nope...Just a typical Steuben County 2 year old...19.5 pounds, 8.5" beard and 7/8" spurs...he sure THOUGHT he was hot stuff though....hehehehe....

X3