first week has been good

[reeltime]

been a crazy first week,  congrats to all that have connected so far.

 

I think I posted a pic of my first day gobbler in NY.  I passed up a 2 year old the second day, and again on saturday. sunday didn't hear a bird n the roost and left a gobbling bird at another location since I had to load up the truck and head to Pa.  got to Pa mid afternoon and started working on the

new addition foundation till we had a breakdown.

the breakdown allowed me to go try to put a gobbler to bed. found a good one with a couple hens, I knew what tree he was going to. Monday morning at 0 dark 30 I was setting against a big poplar tree and 2 hours later when the sky started to lighten up I could see the 2 hens about 70 yards above me. had 7 gobblers around me within 200 yards, the target bird didn't gobble till just about 6 am and only once at that.

5 gobblers and 2 hens flew out to the far end of the cut corn field,  the 2 hens above me pitched out and landed along the edge about 10 yards from me and worked the edge. the target gobbler was roosted right below the hens and only about 10 feet off the ground in the tangle of grapevines. a few clucks and soft yelps brought him right to the gun barrel drumming and strutting hard.  at 20 yards and 6:15 am it was over.

at the shot he hit the forest floor and started wing flapping and I hear birds agressively purring, I look towards the corn field and 2 jakes are running at full speed towards me. I get the bright idea to try and video what I suspect is them beating up the dead bird.  I got a new dumb phone a couple weeks ago and when I turned on the video and those jakes hit the woods they keyed right on me.... I guess the camera light (flash) was on.. so they piddled around there looking at the bird laying there  and then walked off.

21 lbs, 10 1/2" beard, 1 inch needle sharp spurs.

monday late morning friends if mine from louisiana showed up for a few days of turkey hunting,,, Tuesday Dave missed a big longbeard that somehow got around him and Marjie came up to me and then got spooky and walked back by them and he missed it.  Wed. morning we had a bunch of gobblers below us and the boss hen to my left. after I did a limb crashing flydown the gobblers went ballistic and the boss hen came unglued!! The fight of who was gonna have the last word ensued..  the gobblers were just blasting gobbles non stop! I see 2 white heads in front of the shooters.... 3 shots later and no bird.......  not a clue what happened!  I went back to digging my foundation. 

wed evening Marjie said she would like to see a bear before going back south,,, second field we checked in the evening for gobblers had 2 long beards going into the woods.... 300 yards below them is a sow with 3 cubs!  they got some pics and off to the next field.

thursday am found us standing along the field where we watched the 2 gobblers but not a peep from them where we saw them the evening before but they were hammering a couple hundred yards north of there. so we were off, I mentally marked the other 8 gobblers locations.  once they started coming in they wouldn't shut up my fears of them gobbling too much were realized when they were just about to exit the pasture and enter the woods right in front of the shooters.... someone drove right up into the field where the birds were, I saw the truck slowly coming sown the other road about 5 minutes prior and just had that gut feeling he was gonna pull a bonehead move!

 we let things settle and heard the vehicle leaving the field, I waited about 5 minutes and started up calling again and was immediatly met with 2 more gobblers advancing with a loud mouth hen. ended up having 2 jakes get within 10 feet of me and the hen skirted us.

I got back last night and my buddy called me to hunt this morning south of here, got there at 4:30 am. first spot had some person setting way back in the field in a vehicle with all the lights on????? off to the next farm, heard 6 birds, go set up on the hottest one and he was on the ground and coming.. I hear a hen 100 yards to my left, again, and again,,, I told my buddy thats a person, nope I have exclusive rights here and its heavily posted... I said theres birds gobbling those posters do not mean a thing to some people... sure enough soon after that conversation the gobbling ceased from all the birds! while we were trying to slip back to the truck we ran across the tresspassers boot tracks..

 

we get to another spot mid morning, trolling along and we strike a bird, set up and work on him.. after a while he finally  sneaks in but he knows something isn't right and we really were not in a great set up spot. he did get clear enough to see a longbeard on him but his head was on the small side so I surmized him to be a 2 year old and let him sneak away....

 

we moved a couple more times trying to get onto the other bird that had gobbled a couple times during the calling session from the previous bird. finally the3rd set up felt right and the bird was responsive. he certainly didn't run in but e was steadily walking in and finally stepped out gobbled a couple times and finally started getting spooky as there was no hen where he heard it before.  I settled the crosshairs on the side of his head and he crumbled to the ground at the shot.

22lb  10 3/8" beard  1 1/4" spurs..... a decent bird to end my NY season.

[MACHINIST]

Nice birds!!

[34NY]

Nice indeed!

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

[wooly]

Very nice gobblers- sounds like some great action!

I believe you may have hatched from an egg yourself,lol.

Nicely done!

[Terry]

Your on fire! Congrats

[JALA RUT]

That's some great action...Congrats!